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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

SOME AMERICAN 
STORY TELLERS 

A critical analysis of the work 

of Marion Crawford, Robert Her- 

rick, Ellen Glasgow, Robert W. 

Chambers, Gertrude Atherton, 

Winston Churchill, Kate Douglas 

Wiggin, David Graham Phillips, 

Frank Norris,"0. Henry," Owen 

Wister, Booth Tarkington, Edith 

Wharton, and Ambrose Bierce. 

"An invaluable source of information." 
— The Dial. 

With portraits, $i.6o net 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



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JOSEPH CONRAD 



SOME ENGLISH 
STORY TELLERS 

A BOOK OF THE YOUNGER NOVELISTS 



BY 
FREDERIC TABER COOPER 



WITH PORTRAITS 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1912 



.C7 



Copyright, 19 12, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Published November^ igi2 



©CIA328647 



PREFACE 

As in the case of Some American Story Teller Sy 
the title of the present volume has been deliberately 
chosen, in order to place the various types of 
modern writers of fiction more or less on a level, 
as primarily public entertainers, whose first duty 
is to hold public attention with the spell of the 
spoken word. There is no intention to minimize, 
by the use of this title, the high function that 
fiction is tending more and more to play as a 
criticism of contemporary manners and ethics; 
but it does permit of a more indulgent attitude 
towards such writers as take their responsibilities 
more lightly, and to recognize that, within its 
class and in view of its author's purpose, Anthony 
Hope's Dolly Dialogues is as finished a piece of 
story-telling as Arnold Bennett's Old Wives' Tale, 

Furthermore, this volume does not pretend to 
have made a definitive choice of the fifteen novelists 
of the day who are best deserving of critical recog- 
nition. It is necessarily to some extent a matter 
of personal preference; and, since the limits of 
space prevent the inclusion of all the present-day 
writers about whom the author has views that 
he would gladly express, the consequence is that 

V 



vi PREFACE 

several of the younger novelists who well deserve 
a place in these pages have been crowded out, — ■ 
notably, Mr. Leonard Merrick, Mr. J. C. Snaith 
and Mr. W. B. Maxwell, — in order to make room 
for older writers, such as Rudyard Kipling and 
Anthony Hope, whose recognized importance as 
story tellers makes their inclusion a matter to be 
taken for granted. For the most part, however, 
the intention has been to give preference to those 
novelists about whom comparatively little has yet 
been written, in the way of definitely placing 
them, — writers who are of interest quite as much 
for their promise as for their fulfilment, and 
whose best work, there is reason to believe, still 
lies in the future. And that is the reason why 
many story tellers of the recognized worth of Sir 
Arthur Conan Doyle, — to mention only one of 
many names, — have been with some reluctance 
omitted. 

Most of the essays in this volume have ap- 
peared, either in whole or in part, in the New 
York Bookman; portions of the articles on Alfred 
Ollivant, " Frank Danby " and W. J. Locke were 
published in the Forum; those on John Galswor- 
thy and John Trevena have been expanded from 
short papers contributed to the Book News 
Monthly; and certain paragraphs of that on Rud- 
yard Kipling are modified extracts from reviews 
of The Five Nations and Traffics and Discoveries, 



PREFACE vii 

published respectively in the issues of November, 
1903 and 1904, of the World's Work. And to the 
editors of these several periodicals, the author 
wishes herewith to express his appreciation for 
their courtesy in permitting him to reproduce 
the aforesaid articles. 

Frederic Taber Cooper. 
New York City, 
October 29, 1913. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. Joseph Conrad 


. 




PAGE 
1 


II. William Frend De Morgan . 




31 


III. Maurice Hewlett . 




54 


IV. Eden Phillpotts 






94 


V. RuDYARD Kipling . 






122 


VI. William John Locke 






148 


VII. John Galsworthy . 






177 


VIII. Arnold Bennett . 






206 


IX. Anthony Hope 






232 


X. May Sinclair . 






252 


XI. Alfred Ollivant . 






280 


XII. Mrs. Henry Dudeney 






297 


XIII. John Trevena 






324 


XIV. Robert Hichens 






342 


XV. " Frank Danby" . 






. 376 


Bibliography 






417 


Index 






457 



^ 



y 



PORTRAITS 

Joseph Conrad .... Frontispiece^ 

PAGE 

William Frend De Morgan . . . Sl*^ 

Maurice Hewlett . . . . . 54 

Eden Phillpotts 9V 

RuDYARD Kipling 122 

William John Locke 148 

John Galsworthy 177 

Arnold Bennett 206 

Anthony Hope 232 

May Sinclair 252 

Alfred Ollivant 280' 

Mrs. Henry Dudeney .... 297-^ 

John Trevena 324^ 

Robert Hichens 342' 

"Frank Danby " 376 



JOSEPH CONRAD 

With the possible exception of Mr. Henry 
James, there is no living writer of fiction in Eng- 
lish whom it behooves the critic to approach with 
more modesty and self -mistrust than Joseph Con- 
rad. There is no other writer of similar magni- 
tude whose treatment in the past has been so inade- 
quate, so prejudiced, so blindly narrow and one- 
sided. From the time when one of his earliest 
book notices bore the caption, " A Puzzle for Re- 
viewers," his detractors have never become tired 
of insisting that he knows neither how to write 
correct English nor how to construct a story ; 
and his admirers have expended their energies in 
explaining and apologizing for him — whereas, in 
reality, he needs neither apology nor explanation, 
but merely a far heartier recognition than he has 
yet received. The attitude of criticism toward 
him has not seriously troubled Mr. Conrad. As 
he himself writes, in A Personal Record — a unique 
human document, from which it will be profitable 
to draw freely in this article — " fifteen years of 
unbroken silence before praise or blame testify 
sufficiently to my respect for criticism, that fine 



2 JOSEPH CONRAD 

flower of personal expression in the garden of let- 
ters." But, though the author himself can afford 
to be tolerant of miscomprehension and under- 
valuation, the serious student of modern tendencies 
in fiction cannot afford to overlook the fact that 
Conrad is one of the very few who have added 
something absolutely new to the art and the tech- 
nique of his vocation. 

It is worth while before passing on to examine 
more specifically the qualities of Conrad's fiction, 
to take up for a moment a couple of special 
articles of comparatively recent date, that of Mr. 
John A. Macy in the Atlantic Monthly and of 
John Galsworthy in the Contemporary Review. 
These articles are singled out from a number of 
others because, while fairly representative in tone, 
they were put forth with the semblance of special 
authority and finality. Mr. Macy, while question- 
ing the greatness of modem writers in general, 
somewhat dubiously suggests Mr. Conrad as the 
one possible claimant. He extols Mr. Conrad's 
lofty ideals, and then, on the ground that a 
writer of such high standards must be judged 
with exceptional rigidity, proceeds to devote a 
large part of his article to picking flaws in the 
construction of his author's several stories, as 
measured by the pocket rule of cut-and-dried 
technique. The sum and substance of what he 
has to say is to blame Conrad for not having 



JOSEPH CONRAD 3 

done as other and lesser writers were contented 
to do before him — instead of seeking to discover 
how and why he has succeeded in being splendidly 
and triumphantly himself. 

Mr. Galsworthy's article deserves a brief word 
for quite a different reason. Here we have a 
cordial appreciation by a fellow-craftsman who 
already occupies as dignified a position in his own 
generation as Mr. Conrad does in his. That Mr. 
Galsworthy's critical acumen is distinctly in- 
ferior to his creative power becomes apparent 
long before we reach the following paragraph, so 
extravagant that it largely discounts its own 
value : 

The writing of these (Conrad's) ten books is prob- 
ably the only writing of the last twelve years that 
will enrich the English language to any extent. 

The technical side of Joseph Conrad's work 
does not especially interest Mr. Galsworthy. He 
is concerned mainly with an attempt to sum up 
the essential spirit of Conrad in some epigram- 
matic, easily portable form, to find some catch- 
phrase that sounds like an explanation, and 
that really is as futile as an attempt to reduce 
a myriad-sided solid to a plane surface. The 
Universe, in the words of Mr. Galsworthy, " is 
always saying: The little part called man is al- 
ways smaller than the whole I " — and the writer 



4 JOSEPH CONRAD 

who recognizes the truth of this possesses, so he 
tells us, the cosmic spirit. Consequently, Mr. 
Conrad's claim to recognition rests upon the fact 
that he is unique among novelists in possessing 
this spirit: 

In the novels of Balzac and Charles Dickens there 
is the feeling of environment, of the growth of men 
from men. In the novels of Turgenev the characters 
are bathed in light; nature in her many moods is all 
around, but man is first. In the novels of Joseph 
Conrad nature is first, man is second. 

Now, if this were literally true, if Mr. Conrad 
really believed that a rainbow or a water-spout 
was of more importance to mankind than man 
himself: then, instead of proving his claim to 
greatness by pointing out this fact, Mr. Gals- 
worthy would simply have knocked the idol from 
his pedestal and proved him to be stuffed with 
straw. It is all very well to have enough of the 
cosmic spirit to recognize that in the ultimate 
scheme of things the part is always smaller than 
the whole, and that, as a rudimentary principle of 
physics, a mountain contains more molecules than 
a man. But Mr. Conrad is not writing for an 
audience of mountains, but for his fellow-men — 
and no really good work can be done by any liv- 
ing creature, man, beast or bird, whose chief con- 
cern is not with his own species. A member of a 



JOSEPH CONRAD 5 

beehive would make a pretty poor bee if he were 
not convinced of the supreme importance of bees. 

As a matter of fact, Mr. Conrad's books leave 
no such impression on the mind of the average 
reader as they seem to have left upon Mr. Gals- 
worthy. It is almost incredible that any one 
could read them without feeling, above all else, 
their vital and tremendous human interest. It 
is quite true that he deals by preference with 
titanic forces: the unbridled rage of the ocean, 
the invincible sweep of a wind-driven storm, the 
unmeasured and impenetrable depths of a tropic 
forest. But everywhere and always his unit of 
measurement is man ; man measuring his puny 
strength against the universe, and foredoomed to 
defeat ; yet in his defeat remaining always the 
focal point of interest. 

In order to understand how Mr. Conrad has 
formed his style and built up his literary creed, 
it is necessary to keep in mind just a few bio- 
graphical details. Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski 
— to give him his full original name — ^was born in 
the Ukraine in about the year 1857. He comes 
of an old and illustrious family, distinguished for 
many services in peace and in war. His father 
was a poet and critic, and a translator of many 
English books. When he was still a little lad, he 
shared the exile of his parents, following upon the 
political disturbances of the early sixties — and 



6 JOSEPH CONRAD 

it was as a result of this exile that his mother lost 
her life, through the callous refusal of the Rus- 
sian authorities to allow her time to recover from 
a dangerous illness. The last thing on earth that 
his family dreamed of for Conrad was a sea career, 
and his choice, when announced, aroused much 
astonishment and some characteristically mild op- 
position. He has recorded the happenings of a 
certain day spent with his tutor in the Alps, as 
being one of the great turning points in his life: 
" Of his devotion to his unworthy pupil there can 
be no doubt. He had proved it already by two 
years of unremitting and arduous care. I could 
not hate him. But he had been crushing me 
slowly, and when he started to argue on the top 
of the Furca Pass he was, perhaps, nearer suc- 
cess than either he or I imagined." But fate had 
arranged it otherwise ; and a seemingly trivial in- 
cident turned the scales. They met and passed a 
middle-aged and jovial Englishman who, in pass- 
ing, cast upon the boy of fifteen " a glance of 
kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of big, 
sound, shiny teeth " ; and Conrad says further, 
with his naive, illuminating, inimitable power of 
self-revelation : 

His glance, his smile, the unextinguishable and 
comic ardor of his striving forward appearance, 
helped me to pull myself together. . . . The 
enthusiastic old Englishman had passed — and the 



JOSEPH CONRAD 1 

argument went on. What reward could I expect vt 
from such a life at the end of my years_, either in 
ambition^ honor or conscience? An unanswerable 
question. But I felt no longer crushed. Then our 
eyes met and a genuine emotion was visible in his 
a3 well as in mine. The end canj,eall at once. He 
picked up his knapsack suddenly and got onto his feet. 
"You ^I'e an ine<|rr%ible, hopeless Don Quixote. 
That's what you are." 

And after that, adds Conrad, there was no 
further question of his " mysterious vocation, no- 
where nor %ith anj one.^' There are few things 
in all his autobiography more typical of the man 
than the ability shown here, to lay his finger 
unerringly upon this seemingly trivial little detail, 
without which we should never have had Almayer's 
Folly, nor all the sequence of magic volumes which 
followed it. For twenty years, Conrad sailed the 
waters of the globe, working his way upward in the 
English merchant-marine service, through all the 
grades, until he won his Master's certificate, and 
took chief command. There is every reason to be- 
lieve that, as a seaman, be was as painstaking and 
admirable in those days as he now is in the 
capacity of author. But he was unique among 
seamen for his love of reading — for his choice of 
books and his understanding grasp of them. No 
one can study Conrad profitably without keeping 
these all-important formative years in mind; 



8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

years spent in the unconscious amassing of infinite 
and priceless material, in the slow absorption of 
strange and alien personages, exotic and pic- 
turesque cities and harbors, fierce and un- 
disciplined regions on the edge of the world; 
all the stage-settings and raw materials for human 
drama in the bulk. And all the while that he was 
unconsciously assimilating his material, Conrad 
was, with equal unconsciousness, learning how best 
to use it, by his tireless and voracious reading, — 
reading of books which some inborn instinct led 
him to choose with wonderful wisdom. The 
French writers were his favorites, and he learned 
his respect of the mot juste from Flaubert, and 
something of construction from Maupassant. In 
English, his tastes were similarly healthy. 
Dickens naturally appealed to him in a mild de- 
gree, for he shares with Dickens the love of 
drawing straight from life odd, grotesque, often- 
times misshapen oddities of humanity, and slightly 
caricaturing them in doing so. But Trollope is 
an author whose name crops up more frequently in 
Conrad's autobiographical pages, — and another 
whose influence is even more potent is Henry 
James, — Henry James, who, with all his manner- 
isms, has done more, than any other living master 
of fiction, to teach those who read him under- 
standingly, the sheer craft of story writing. 
These facts: twenty years face to face with 



JOSEPH CONRAD 9 

hardship and heroism ; twenty years of leisure and 
isolation in which to grow up slowly to a knowledge 
of precisely how he could make the best use of his 
material; twenty years to drill himself in a lan- 
guage to which he was a total stranger up to his 
twentieth year, are a sufficient answer to those 
critics who were at one time too ready to dismiss 
Conrad's work lightly, as that of a man who had 
not learned his craft. The simple truth is that he 
had learned it with a thoroughness such as is hard 
to duplicate; that he knows his own reason for 
every episode, every paragraph, every separate 
word; that if he makes a mistake, if there are 
better ways for doing any one particular thing, 
his fault is committed with his eyes open, and 
in an honest belief that, for him at least, it is the 
one and only way. 

Accordingly, it is well to take up the two re- 
proaches most frequently made against him, and 
to consider to what extent they are justified. As 
a matter of fact, it would be easy to take up a 
hundred apparent faults instead of two, because 
there is hardly any known rule of technique that 
Mr. Conrad does not deliberately break when he 
chooses, — for of what good are rules based on the 
practice of the older writers save to be broken by 
the new writer who happens to be big and strong 
enough to justify his iconoclasm? But the two 
reproaches in question are : first, that he follows no 



10 JOSEPH CONRAD 

logical development of a story, but goes zigzag- 
ging back and forth, from east to west, from past 
to future, apparently quite without purpose or 
orientation. And, secondly, that he has no sense 
of proportion, that some parts of his stories are 
inordinately long, and others absurdly short ; that 
he will squander a full-length plot on a short story, 
and amplify a mere episode into four hundred 
pages. Both these charges are true, — a fact that 
does not matter in itself, but does vitally matter if 
he fails to prove that for his specific purpose his 
way is the one and only way to get the best result. 
Did you ever watch a common garden spider 
preparing to spin its web? From some appar- 
ently irrelevant point on a leaf or branch, it sud- 
denly drops a number of inches to some other 
equally irrelevant point; then it proceeds at a 
tangent to a new point of departure, hesitates, 
retraces its steps, picks up some lost thread, 
crosses and recrosses its path, pausing to tie a 
knot here and there, — and all of a sudden this 
apparently aimless zigzagging takes on a definite 
design, of perfect and marvelous symmetry. Now, 
it may be cheerfully granted that this would not 
be the approved method of knitting stockings or 
weaving calico; there are some purposes, and 
worthy ones, where the conventional, straight- 
ahead method is praiseworthy. But there are cer- 
tain types of genius that must work according to 



JOSEPH CONRAD 11 

their inborn nature : and it happens that Mr. Con- 
rad shares with the spider the genius of the zig- 
zag method, and by the help of it spins fabrics 
quite as marvelous and inimitable. He cannot 
help himself; his mind works in that way. When, 
in Almayer's Folly, he tells us the story of the 
degeneration of a white man exiled in the heart 
of the Malay Peninsula, and of his crushing dis- 
appointment at the marriage of his half-caste 
daughter with a native, it is characteristic of him 
that the story should open when the end is already 
is sight, and that a majority of the chapters 
should be concerned with filling in the missing 
links ; still more characteristic that a subsequent 
volume, The Outcast of the Island, announced as 
a sequel, should prove to be, not a continuation, — 
since Almayer's Folly left nothing to continue, — 
but rather a sort of preface, reverting to the 
earlier daj^s of Almayer's prosperity and his 
daughter's infancy. A still more convincing 
proof that this is the way in which Mr. Conrad 
sees a story is that he adopts the same identical 
method for telling his own biography. A Per- 
sonal Record is an exceptionally frank and self- 
revealing document covering Mr. Conrad's entire 
life, from his earliest recollections down to the 
present day ; but the first of its eight chapters 
opens during the winter in the early nineties, when 
he was icebound in the river harbor of Rouen, 



12 JOSEPH CONRAD 

when he was engaged in writing the tenth chapter 
of Almayer's Folly, — and no two chapters and 
scarcely two pages are consecutive in point of 
time. And the reason for this is so palpable that 
even a dunce could hardly miss it. The greatest 
adventure that Mr. Conrad's soul ever underwent 
was his first experiment in fiction: and accord- 
ingly his biography is built up with the deliberate 
intent of making the genesis of Almayer's FoUi/y 
from its inception to its final publication, the one 
triumphant leitmotiv of his whole life history. 

In precisely the same way we may explain the 
indirect and zigzag progress of his other writings. 
Your cut-and-dried critic, who insists on measur- 
ing a mountain with a footrule and quarrels with 
it for daring to be out of line, insists also on 
labeling a certain character hero and another 
heroine. And, naturally, when this critic notes 
that his so-called hero drops out of sight for a 
considerable number of chapters, and, it may be, 
the heroine vanishes altogether in mid-channel, 
he feels himself aggrieved and says that the 
author does not know how to construct. The 
truth about Mr. Conrad is simply this : he is more 
likely than not to take some force of nature as his 
protagonist; in Typhoon, the leading part is 
taken, not by Captain MacWhirr, nor his under- 
ofBcer, nor by any one of the two hundred coolies 
between decks, but by the typhoon itself. And, 



JOSEPH CONRAD 13 

similarly, in The Nigger of the Narcissus, the 
leading part is not taken by any one of the of- 
ficers or crew, — not even by the Nigger of the 
title, — indeed, like Vanity Fair, it might be called 
A Novel Without a Hero, and with only one 
heroine, the treacherous, implacable sea. 

And, secondly, as regards the question of sheer 
material length in story writing. It is a deep- 
rooted fallacy that there are some themes suit- 
able for a full-length novel and others fit only for 
a short story. As a matter of fact, such a dis- 
tinction is disastrously misleading. There are 
some minds who see in a battlefield a long-volume 
epic, a Peace and War, sl Debacle; there are 
others who, like Browning, see only an " Incident 
of the French Camp," material at most for a 
dozen lines of verse. The diff^erence does not lie 
in the theme, but in the temperament of the in- 
dividual, the fashion in which he looks upon life 
in general and upon some specific story in par- 
ticular. In the whole range of contemporary fic- 
tion it would be difficult to find this truth better 
exemplified than it is in the work of Conrad. In 
all of his writings he has set his own pace, fallen 
into his own particular stride, so to speak, ig- 
noring all precedents regarding a conventional 
proportion between subject and space, crumpling 
up a world-wide theme into the narrow limits of a 
few pages, and stretching out some transitory in- 



14 JOSEPH CONRAD 

cident into the bulk of a portly volume, — and yet 
the very last objection which a critic, who has 
learned to read understandingly and recognizes 
genius in unfamiliar garb, would dream of mak- 
ing, is that certain of his stories are too short 
and certain others too long. Take, for instance, 
his Nigger of the Narcissus — ^better known in this 
country as Children of the Sea, — being one of the 
many English stories whose titles have suffered 
an unfortunate sea-change during their passage 
into an American edition. Let any other writer 
submit the synopsis of the plot to his publisher, 
and, if that publisher knows his business, he will 
tell the author frankly that there is barely enough 
plot in it for a Sunday special, to say nothing 
of a book. Yet Mr. Conrad wove out of it a 
magic volume, full of the life and breadth and 
infinite variety of the sea ; and, in the center of 
the picture, the inert figure of a sickly, malinger- 
ing negro stands out as clear-cut as an ebony idol 
against a background of ivory, mysterious, fore- 
boding, the embodiment of fate. Or again, take 
The Heart of Darkness, one of the shortest stories 
Mr. Conrad has written^ and at the same time 
containing one of the biggest, most suggestive of 
his themes. It is nothing less than a presentment 
of the clashing of two continents, a symbolic pic- 
ture of the inborn antagonism of two races, the 
white and the black. It pictures the subtle dis- 



JOSEPH CONRAD 15 

integration of a white man's moral stamina under 
the stress of the darkness, the isolation, the im- 
mensity of the African jungle: the loss of dignity 
and courage and self-respect through daily con- 
tact with the native man and the native woman. 
The whole thing is a matter of a few score pages, 
and yet, such is its strength coupled with a cer- 
tain indescribable trick of verbal foreshortening, 
that it gives the impression of measureless time 
and distance. We feel that we have spent years 
in his company, roaming through the murky at- 
mosphere of physical and moral darkness — and 
still beyond stretch unexplored vistas, measure- 
less, forbidding, unspeakable. 

It must be conceded that Mr. Conrad's style, 
unique and finished as it is, does not make easy 
reading. It resembles nothing so much as the 
depth, the mystery, the riotous luxuriance of 
those tropical forests wherein so many of his 
earlier stories were laid. There are whole pages 
and chapters where you are forced to move for- 
ward gropingly, with the caution of a pioneer, 
peering ahead at the vague forms of thought that 
you see suggested ; and then, suddenly, there comes 
an open spot, illuminated with the sunshine of 
perfectly clear mental pictures, crowding tumul- 
tuously upon you; a flash and flare of rainbow 
coloring seems to streak the page with scarlet 
and purple and gold. That, in brief, is an 



16 JOSEPH CONRAD 

epitome of Conrad's art; to keep you at one time 
groping in the dark, shrinking from unguessed 
horrors, dimly seen through the fog and mist; 
and the next moment to blind you with the un- 
expected flood of mental light. And back of 
his method lies a vein of unguessed rich- 
ness, an inexhaustible mine of untold stories. 
He gives you the impression that, instead of pour- 
ing out all that he knows of strange lands and 
alien races, he is holding himself severely in check, 
— sketching in here and there one face and form 
out of the hundreds that elbow themselves for- 
ward in his memory; condensing these sketches 
down to the fewest possible, strong, impressionistic 
strokes, so as to leave space on his crowded can- 
vas for other importunate memories constantly 
clamoring for recognition. Other writers before 
Conrad have possessed the art of painting crowds, 
jostling throngs in the street, armies of men on 
the march and in the heat of action ; but they 
have produced their effects by a flood of detail 
poured out upon the page with the reckless lav- 
ishness of one who paints with a palette knife. 
Conrad's distinction lies in the power of sug- 
gestion, the ability to make you feel that, how- 
ever much he shows you of life, there is vastly 
more that he leaves untold. 

To produce these efl^ects, it is not enough 
merely to will to do so. It is necessary above all 



JOSEPH CONRAD 17 

to be a consummate master of words, and at the 
same time to have a profound reverence for them. 
It is not too much to say that Mr. Conrad is in 
this respect the peer of Rudyard Kipling, — ^with 
this difference: that being an ahen by birth, he 
does, in a deliberate and highly sophisticated way, 
what the author of Kim does by instinct. In this 
connection, it is profitable to take two extracts 
from Conrad's own avowals, the first dating back 
to the beginning of his career as an artist, in 
about 1897 ; the second representing his latest ut- 
terance. The first appeared in a most interesting 
personal foot-note in the New Review: 

It is only through complete, unswerving devotion 
to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is 
only through an unremitting^ never discouraged care 
for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach 
can be made to plasticity, to color; and the light of 
magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an 
evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of 
words; of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by 
ages of careless usage. The sincere endeavor to ac- 
complish that creative task, to go as far on that road 
as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by 
faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid 
justification for the worker in prose. And if his 
conscience is clear, his answer to those who, in the 
fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, 
demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; 



18 JOSEPH CONRAD 

who demand to be promptly improved^ or encour- 
aged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must 
run thus: My task which I am trying to achieve is, 
by the power of the written word, to make you hear, 
to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. 
That — and no more, and it is everything. If I suc- 
ceed, 3'^ou shall find there, according to your deserts, 
encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you de- 
mand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for 
which you have forgotten to ask. 

The second extract will be found in " A 
Familiar Preface," which forms the introduction 
to A Personal Record: 

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, 
not in the right argument, but in the right word. The 
power of sound has always been greater than the 
power of sense. I don't say this by way of dis- 
paragement. It is better for mankind to be impres- 
sionable than reflective. Nothing humanly great — 
great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives — 
has come from reflection. On the other hand, you 
cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such 
words as Glory, for instance, or Pity. I won't men- 
tion any more. They are not far to seek. Shouted 
with perseverance, with ardor, with conviction, these 
two by their sound alone have set whole nations in 
motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which 
rests our whole social fabric. There's ** virtue " for 
you if you like! . . c 



JOSEPH CONRAD 19 

Mr. Conrad is not one of the authors whom it 
is profitable to study book by book. In spite 
of a few dissenting opinions, he has not greatly 
grown in the course of years. He is one of those 
rare Minervas of literature who issued in the first 
instance of full stature. Almai/er's Folly, his 
first volume, the product of five years of inter- 
mittent and laborious, although loving work, has 
remained, there is reason to suspect, the favorite 
child of his brain. The theme already mentioned, 
— that of the disintegration of the European 
amid the debasing surroundings of Eastern bar- 
barism, is one to which he reverts again and 
again, in his later works. But coming first, it 
had, not only the glamor of a maiden effort, but, 
what was infinitely more important to the author, 
the nostalgia of vanished days, the fascination of 
une chose vecue. The Nigger of the Narcissus is 
almost equally a personal document. It repre- 
sents a composite picture of the types of officers 
and seamen grown familiar through a score of 
years. It is impossible to appreciate even re- 
motely the personal element of this book without 
having read a volume which followed it a decade 
later, The Mirror of the Sea. In reading that 
storehouse of personal reminiscences, one guesses 
between the lines how much heart-ache, how many 
lost friendships, what a host of vanished memories 
went into the making of that wonderful verbal 



20 JOSEPH CONRAD 

mosaic which American readers know under the 
name of Children of the Sea. 

Close upon its heels followed a volume of short 
stories, — really short stories, in the accepted sense, 
— entitled Tales of Unrest. This is worth an 
additional emphasis, because it called forth the 
first big public recognition that Conrad received. 
Together with Hewlett's Forest Lovers and Sid- 
ney Lee's Life of William Shali:espeare, it com- 
pleted the trio of volumes which at that time 
the London Academy was in the habit of " crown- 
ing " each year and rewarding with a prize of 
fifty guineas. Most of the stories in this vol- 
ume are wrought from his familiar material of 
Malays, half-castes, and degenerate Europeans ; 
but there is just one story, " The Return," which 
is worth signaling, because it is his first, last and 
only attempt to do the familiar French analytical 
story of wedded incompatibility. It is memorable 
because it comes so exasperatingly near being a 
tremendously big story, — and instead, speaking 
frankly, it is a failure. The scene is London, the 
chief actors are an average business man and his 
still more average wife. He thinks he under- 
stands her. As a matter of fact, they have 
through five years been imperceptibly drifting 
apart. One day he comes home as usual, to find 
awaiting him a letter from her, telling him that 
she has eloped with another man. His surprise, 



JOSEPH CONRAD 21 

his conventional dismay, his whole cut-and-dried 
attitude of mind are interpreted with a skill that 
baffles praise. But, because she is the hopelessly 
average woman, she lacks the courage of her re- 
volt; she comes back. And here comes the part 
that spoils the story. Throughout a dialogue 
that drifts on endlessly, the woman remains a 
living, throbbing bundle of nerves, and the man 
becomes a stilted, unreal mouthpiece of Mr. Con- 
rad's vain imaginings. Mr. Galsworthy was ab- 
solutely right when he said that the hero of this 
story was one of the few instances in which Con- 
rad had drawn a character that was hopelessly 
wooden. 

As already suggested, there is no purpose in 
analyzing one by one all of Conrad's stories. Be- 
cause of his peculiar trick of foreshortening, 
some of his longest books may be summed up in 
a dozen words. Lord Jirriy which many com- 
petent judges regard as his masterpiece, is simply 
the epic of a man's rehabilitation after being 
proved a coward. Typhoon is an allegory, half 
epic, half satiric, of the impotence of physical life 
before the blind, unchained forces of nature, — a 
fable told with all the forceful brevity of Le 
Chene et le Roseau of La Fontaine. Nostromo 
belongs to a different category. From whatever 
side you view it, it is too big, too complex, too 
full of dim, unfathomed places, to be easily or 



2^ JOSEPH CONRAD 

briefly epitomized. More than one critic has 
openly avowed his preference for this book, and 
the present writer owns his personal predilection 
for it. It has more actual story to it, of a 
dramatic sort, more of the greed and sordidness 
and knavery of human nature, than any of Con- 
rad's previous books. Primarily, it is the story of 
a silver mine and a buried treasure, in a little 
South American republic, where the people, like 
the republic itself, are volcanic. It is a kaleido- 
scopic picture of a grasping, rapacious conflict 
between a government, on the one hand, ever tot- 
tering on the brink of revolution ; and the private 
owners of the mine, on the other, for such mutual 
concessions and privileges as would convert that 
mine from the white elephant it has always been 
into a profitable investment. More specifically, it 
is the story of the life of an exceptional man. 
Nostromo, as he is called by his English em- 
ployers, the officials of the Oceanic Steam Navi- 
gation Company, — ^who coin the name out of the 
Italian words which they misunderstand and mis- 
pronounce, — is a Genoese sailor, who decides to 
remain at Sulaco, in the capacity of Capataz de 
Cargadores, captain of the company's lighter- 
men and caretaker of the jetty. Now, the key- 
note of Nostromo's character is a curious sort of 
pride, a love of self-importance. By day and by 
night, sleepless, vigilant, alert, he is ever at the 



JOSEPH CONRAD 23 

service of the entire population, native and for- 
eign. Of infinite resource and magnetic tempera- 
ment, he has worked his way into the confidence 
and esteem of Spanish officials, English agents, 
and the scum and rabble of the foreign quarters ; 
and none in Sulaco is too low or too high to touch 
hat to him and exchange cordial words of greeting. 
Perhaps the nearest approach to a brief analysis 
of the complex web of this book is to say that it 
tells how this Nostromo, whose pride and joy, 
whose whole stock-in-trade in life is his integrity, 
his unblemished reputation, becomes a thief, — it 
is a study of the curse which may come from the 
secret knowledge of a buried treasure. 

In view of the personal preference above ex- 
pressed for this volume, above his other writings, 
it seems worth while to quote Mr. Conrad's own 
words, telling us how large a place it held in his 
own life, during the greater part of two years ; 

Nostromo, a tale of an imaginary (but true) sea- 
board^ which is still mentioned now and again, 
and indeed kindly, sometimes, in connection with 
the word " failure " and sometimes in conjunction 
with the word " astonishing." I have no opinion on 
this discrepancy. It's the sort of difference that can 
never be settled. All I know is that, for twenty 
months, neglecting the common joys of life that fall 
to the lot of the humblest on this earth, I had, like 
the prophet of old, " wrestled with the Lord " for my 



24 JOSEPH CONRAD 

creation, for the headlands of the coast, for the dark- 
ness of the Placid Gulf, the light on the snows, the 
clouds on the sky, and for the breath of life that had 
to be blown into the shapes of men and women, of 
Latin and Saxon, of Jew and Gentile. These are, 
perhaps, strong words, but it is difficult to character- 
ize otherwise the intimacy and the strain of a creative 
effort in which mind and will and conscience are 
engaged to the full, hour after hour, day after day, 
away from the world, and to the exclusion of all that 
makes life really lovable and gentle — something for 
which a material parallel can only be found in the 
everlasting somber stress of the westward winter 
passage round Cape Horn. 

Next in importance to the two novels, Nostromo 
and Lord Jim, come a number of mid-length 
stories, including Heart of Darkness, already al- 
luded to; and Typhoon, that unequaled picture 
of the titanic warfare between sea and sky, in 
which a vessel laden with human freight is made 
the colossal joke of the elements, and we are 
shown the inimitable sight of two hundred Chinese 
coolies, together with their sundered chests, 
hurtling back and forth between decks, clawing 
and snarling like so many cats, in their vain pur- 
suit of an infinite number of fugitive silver 
dollars. 

Two or three more of these middle-distance 
stories deserve mention. To-Tnorrow pictures a 



JOSEPH CONRAD 25 

father wlio has disinherited his son, driven him 
from home, and later repented of the act. 
Through long, lonely years he has comforted him- 
self with the belief that the son will some day re- 
turn, perhaps to-morrow — and he has brooded 
upon this hope until it has become a fixed idea, an 
obsession, that the son will come to-morrow. At 
last the son does come, but since things in this 
material, work-a-day world necessarily happen in 
the present, and not in the future, the father's 
clouded brain refuses to recognize him, because 
he has come to-day, when he should have come to- 
morrow, — the morrow which must always remain 
in the future. Equally simple is the structure of 
Amy Foster y the story of a mute, inglorious 
tragedy. It pictures the fate of a young Slavonic 
emigrant, driven, together with hordes of his 
kind, on board an ocean liner, tossed for days in 
a watery prison, and then cast by night upon the 
English coast, the sole survivor of a whole ship's 
company. Ignorant of his whereabouts, speaking 
an outlandish tongue, hounded, penniless and 
hungry, from door to door, a terror to women and 
children, who think him a madman, he dies at last 
in destitution, like a homeless dog, having awak- 
ened a passing compassion in just one heart, the 
Amy Foster of the title. In reducing these 
crowded, concentrated stories of Conrad's to a 
mere skeleton, it is so easy to over-reach one's self. 



26 JOSEPH CONRAD 

It is only fair to say, by way of postscript, that 
there is a second interest in this story. Amy 
Foster, caught, like many another woman before 
her, by sheer novelty, marries the refugee, and 
then, strangely enough, and yet as the doctor 
says, not without parallel, after her child is born, 
she conceives a growing dislike for him. There is, 
perhaps, in all of Mr. Conrad's writings, no single 
scene more poignant than that in which the dying 
Slav, delirious from fever, forgets his few words of 
English, and, in his frantic supplications for 
water, which might have saved his life, frightens 
out of the house the woman who has vowed to 
love, honor and obey, and who leaves him to die in 
agony. 

But one of the finest and most characteristic 
stories that Mr. Conrad ever wrote is FalJc. 
Curiously enough, it is drawn, in a measure, from 
a memory of his childhood. There was a family 
legend of a great-uncle who served under Na- 
poleon, and who, during the retreat from Moscow, 
owed his life to the capture and utilization, for 
culinary purposes, of a very old, very mangy, 
Lithuanian dog. " It was not thin — on the con- 
trary, it seemed unhealthily obese ; its skin showed 
bare patches of an unpleasant character. How- 
ever, they had not killed that dog for the sake 
of the pelt. He was large. ... He was eaten. 
„ c . The rest is silence. . . ." In his childhood, 



JOSEPH CONRAD 2T 

Mr. Conrad underwent innumerable pleasurable 
shudders over the story of the cooking and con- 
sumption of that dog. He confesses that, in sober 
middle-age, he still can shudder over the memory 
of that story. 

I have lived on ancient salt junk, I know the 
taste of shark^ of trepang, of snake, of nondescript 
dishes containing things without a name — but of the 
Lithuanian village dog — never! I wish it to be dis- 
tinctly understood that it is not I, but my grand- 
uncle Nicholas, of the Polish landed gentry, Chevalier 
de la Legion d'Honneur, etc., who, in his young days, 
had eaten the Lithuanian dog. I wish he had not. 
The childish horror of the deed clings absurdly to 
the grizzled man. I am perfectly helpless against it. 

Now, Mr. Conrad does not admit any connec- 
tion between this incident and Folk. Neverthe- 
less, it takes no special discernment to realize that 
without that childhood thrill, something would 
have been missing from the tale. On the sur- 
face. Folk gives promise of pure comedy, — a trick 
not without precedent in Mr. Conrad's method of 
work. It opens with a grotesque wooing of a 
Dutch girl, phlegmatic, florid, and opulent of 
physique, by a thin, taciturn Scandinavian pilot, 
on board her uncle's vessel in the harbor of a 
Chinese river town. But Falk is a man haunted 
by the memory of a revolting deed; he shows it 



S8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

in his face, somber, taciturn, sinister, and in his 
manner, his trick of periodically covering his 
features with both hands, and then drawing them 
downwards with a slow, shuddering movement, as 
though to wipe away the vision of a waking night- 
mare. The truth is that once, under the dire 
stress of shipwreck and starvation, it had become 
evident that human flesh alone stood between a 
whole ship's crew and death. In the face of this 
horror, they had not drawn lots, but had fallen 
upon one another like wild beasts, and Talk, in 
whom the lust for life had been strongest, was the 
sole survivor. For six years this memory has 
haunted him ; and now his suffering is doubled, be- 
cause he has at last found a woman " generous of 
form, Olympian and simple, indeed the siren to 
fascinate the dark navigator," and he is con- 
fronted with the question whether any woman 
could knowingly wed a man who has been guilty of 
cannibalism. 

Of Mr. Conrad's more recent books it is not 
necessary to speak at this time and in this place. 
Whatever he does, whether alone or in collabora- 
tion, whether in the form of fiction or personal 
reminiscence, is all essentially imbued with the 
same spirit, and stamped with the same careful and 
deliberate workm.anship, the same daring original- 
ity of style. But the true, the unadulterated soul 
of Conrad is in the books of his middle period, in 



JOSEPH CONRAD 29 

the shorter stories, such as Typhoon and Heart of 
Darkness, in novels like Nostromo and Lord Jim. 
To spend time analyzing his tales of anarchists, 
whether in London, as in The Secret Agent, or in 
Russia, as in Under Western Eyes, would be for 
the present purpose an anticlimax. It is true 
that Mr. Conrad is a sort of literary amphibian ; 
he is almost as much at home when writing of the 
land as of the sea. None the less, the latter is 
his true abode, and his best pages are those that 
deal with ships and harbors, docks and quays, 
sluggish tropical rivers, swarming water fronts, 
and all the motley crowds, the flaring colors, the 
babel of speech, the unnumbered and indistinguish- 
able mixture of racial types and nationalities, to 
be found nowhere on earth save where land and 
sea touch shoulders. Yet, if one were making a 
prediction, it would be safest to say that Mr. 
Conrad will live longest in his pages of the life 
on ships in mid-ocean. In certain unforgettable 
pages in The Mirror of the Sea, he tells us of a 
first mate under whom he once sailed, and who, 
during the long weeks spent in an Australian port, 
habitually returned from shore intoxicated, in 
the mid watches of the night. And one night, 
when more unsteady than usual, the mate lingered 
on deck a moment, swaying heavily and support- 
ing himself on his companion's arm, and voiced his 
wish that he were out at sea : " Ports are no good ; 



30 JOSEPH CONRAD 

ships rot, men go to the devil ! " And that one 
sentence sums up the difference between Conrad's 
stories of the sea and of the harbor. They are 
equally good, equally poignant with truth; but 
on the one hand, the stories of the sea breathe 
freely of ozone and clean salt spray, and simple 
faith and bravery ; and on the other, the stories of 
the harbor are redolent of physical and moral de- 
cay : " Ships rot, men go to the devil." Through- 
out Conrad's stories, he shows us man fighting a 
losing fight; but at sea it is a physical fight, and 
on land it is a moral one. In either case, his work- 
manship remains, as it always has been, very nearly 
flawless. 




WIIJJAM FREND DE MORGAN 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

Or the various English novelists who have come 
into prominence since the opening of the twentieth 
century, the case of Mr. De Morgan is in a num- 
ber of ways exceptional. Here we have a man in 
advanced middle age suddenly and successfully in- 
vading a new field of art, breaking all records for 
belated achievement in fiction, venturing with the 
courage of inexperience to give us stories running 
close upon a quarter-million of words and written 
in the manner of half a century ago, — and never- 
theless receiving an immediate, enthusiastic and 
widespread acclaim almost without precedent. It 
is probably for these reasons that practically all 
the critics who have devoted any extended space to 
an analysis of Mr. De Morgan's writings have 
bestowed a quite disproportionate attention upon 
genealogical and biographical details, — much as 
though the author in question were a newly dis- 
covered zoological species, and it behooved them to 
trace carefully his line of evolution. 

For practical purposes of criticism, however, 
all that we need to remember about Mr. De Mor- 
gan's personal history is that he began life as an 

81 



S2 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

artist, abandoned painting five years later in 
favor of making designs for stained glass, entered 
shortly afterward upon the manufacture of pot- 
tery, and, in spite of small pecuniary returns, con- 
tinued to devote himself to ceramics until the age 
of sixty-four, when his first novel, Joseph VancCy 
was published. These few brief details picture a 
man who, in spite of versatility, has always con- 
sistently adhered to one or another form of 
creative art; yet, quite early in life, rejected that 
form which, even more than literature, demands 
an inborn gift for grouping and composition, a 
fine instinct for proportion and symmetry. Mr. 
De Morgan's chief preoccupation, throughout half 
a normal lifetime, was the beauty of minute detail, 
the quality of glaze upon a teacup, the excellence 
of color or design in a tile. His is the type of 
mind which gradually, through the passage of 
years, might be expected to gather up a treasure- 
house of fine, delicate, unique ideas about life in 
general, much as a connoisseur gathers together 
rare gems of porcelain, quite indifi^erent as to 
whether they group themselves harmoniously upon 
their respective shelves. 

In view of these facts, Mr. De Morgan's first 
novel proved to be precisely what might have been 
expected: a novel almost destitute of plot con- 
struction, and with as many loose ends of nar- 
rative, as many interruptions and asides of author 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 33 

to gentle reader as may be found in Dickens and 
Thackeray in their most unrestrained mood. The 
author of Joseph Vance may or may not be a 
reader of modern fiction ; but so far as the internal 
evidence of his own volumes goes, his reading may 
well have stopped with the decease of the great 
Early Victorians. One looks in vain for any 
trace of his having profited from Hardy or Mere- 
dith, from Henry James or Rudyard Kipling or 
Joseph Conrad, or from any one of that splendid 
band of Frenchmen who, in recent years, have 
raised the technique of plot to the level of a fine 
art. There is something about the term " Early- 
Victorian " which Mr. De Morgan seems vaguely 
to resent. He protests that there is no good 
reason for affixing this label to him permanently, 
merely because the scenes of his earlier books were 
laid some fifty years ago, and that the public is un- 
just in finding fault with him for choosing in his 
later volumes either to go back a couple of cen- 
turies earlier or to come down a generation or so 
nearer to our own time. Apparently Mr. De 
Morgan has misunderstood the spirit of a good 
deal of the adverse criticism that followed An 
Affair of Dishonor. The trouble was not with the 
supposed date of the story, but with the quality 
of the achievement as a whole. It makes no dif- 
ference in what century or country the author of 
A Likely Story may choose to lay his scenes: he 



34 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

himself remains consistently Early-Victorian in 
spirit. For, be it said without offence, Mr. De 
Morgan is, in a mild sense, a literary anachronism, 
— as, in a slighter degree, Du Maurier was be- 
fore him, — and his best work, the work by which 
he is most likely to be remembered, is that which 
in time and atmosphere best harmonizes with the 
spirit in which it is conceived. 

No discerning critic could read Joseph Vance 
without saying : " Here we have the work of an 
author who drives his pen ahead largely at hap- 
hazard^ vfiih. only a minimum of preconception 
to help him out, and largely deriving his pleasure 
and inspiration from the surprises which his char- 
acters every little while persist in forcing upon 
him. This is precisely the method of the authors 
of Vanity Fair and the PicJcwich Papers; it is a 
method rendered well-nigh obsolete by the require- 
ments of modern craftsmanship : yet it is still the 
method of Mr. De Morgan." 

I asked him (records Mr. E. V. Lucas, one of his 
most indulgent critics) what were his methods of 
work, and he replied that his only method was to sit 
before a piece of paper with his pen in his hand — in 
summer in Chelsea, and in winter in Florence — and 
wait for the words to come. It sounds very simple; 
about two thousand words a day is his average, and 
he rejects about as much as he keeps. He has a very 
definite general idea before him, but many of the 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 35 

details surprise him as much as they surprise the 
reader. In other words^ his novels, like Topsy, are 
not born, but grow. 

And here is an even franker confession, recorded 
verbatim by Mr. Bram Stoker : 

I make no scenario. I just go on finding, as one 
often does, such inspiration as is necessary from my 
pen. I find that the mere holding of a pen makes 
me think. The pen even seems to have some con- 
sciousness of its own. It can certainly begin the 
work. Then I forget all about it, and go whitherso- 
ever thought or the characters lead me. 

It is due, no doubt, to this distinctly amorphous 
quality of his writings that Lady Cecil remarked 
in what another critic has termed her " somewhat 
supercilious manner," that " Agreed as we are 
that Mr. De Morgan's success is deserved, we are 
yet more agreed that his deserved success has had 
very little to do with art." Without attempting 
to minimize Mr. De Morgan's deficiencies, one 
must concede that so sweeping a judgment is un- 
fair. Construction of plot is not the only ele- 
ment in fiction writing that requires art. There 
is the equally important art of portrait painting, 
and in this respect Mr. De Morgan has achieved 
an enviable fame. He is one of the few writers 
since Trollope who have been conspicuously sue- 



36 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

cessful in portraying convincingly the slow growth 
and development of character through a long suc- 
cession of years. 

On the other hand, it does not do to overlook 
entirely Mr. De Morgan's weakness In technique, 
on the ground advanced by one of his enthusiastic 
champions, that he is " one of those authors who 
are big enough to break all the rules." The 
authors who are big enough to break all the rules 
content themselves with breaking one or two or 
perhaps half a dozen, and adhere all the more 
scrupulously to the others, to atone for the lib- 
erties they have taken. A departure from rule 
is vindicated only when the author guilty of such 
boldness succeeds in obtaining bigger, better re- 
sults than he could have obtained in the accepted, 
conventional way. Otherwise, the most that may 
be said is that his book is good, not because of his 
disregard of rules, but in spite of it. And this 
judgment applies In large measure to Mr. De 
Morgan. 

Let us consider briefly what this middle-aged 
gentleman with the Early-Victorian mind has 
actually achieved in the seven years since he 
launched upon a tardy literary career. There 
are, up to date, six uniform volumes, of portly and 
imposing appearance. No greater mistake can 
be made than to attempt to read them hastily ; 
they are essentially designed for the leisurely- 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 37 

minded reader, who can wait without impatience 
until day after to-morrow or week after next be- 
fore learning whom Lossie married, or whether 
Joseph proposed a second time to Janey, or what 
old Vance had saved so carefully in the rescued 
package. The interest is not in the suspense of 
expectation, but in the pervading sense of kindly 
optimism, the whimsical humor, the author's own 
obvious share in our enjoyment of each and all 
of his characters. Some of these volumes almost 
defy an attempt to condense their substance into 
a brief paragraph. Joseph Vance, for instance, 
may be baldly described as the life history of a 
boy, rescued almost from the gutter and educated 
by a kind-hearted and cultured gentleman, for 
whose younger daughter, five years older than 
himself, the boy conceives a romantic attachment 
that never dies out, and that much later in the 
story prompts him to take upon his own shoul- 
ders the guilt of the girl's brother, in order to 
spare her pain. But this gives literally no idea 
of the inimitable quality of this rare and tender 
story, that has made the names of Christopher 
Vance and Dr. Thorpe, Violet and Lossie, Jeanie 
and Janey, household words among untold scores 
of readers. Or we might try again and tell 
how this story would never have had a start had 
not Christopher Vance tried to drown his sorrow 
at losing his job, and after absorbing more half- 



38 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

pints of beer than was discreet, quarreled with a 
" sweep " for having " crocked a hinsect," lurking 
in the bottom of the glass, and in the fight that 
ensued, seriously injured his spine by falling 
backward upon an upstanding brick. The sobri- 
ety resulting from some weeks in the hospital; an 
illogical purchase, from a pedlar, of a second-hand 
sign-board, by which, thanks to some alteration 
in the name, he proclaimed himself a builder and 
drain-man; sudden trouble with the flues and the 
drains at the neighboring house of Dr. Thorpe, 
and an emergency call upon Vance, who, despite 
the sign, had never dug a drain nor built a flue 
in his life: — these are just a few of the initial 
details that lead to an acquaintance between two 
families apparently hopelessly separated in the 
social scale, and open brilliant prospects for the 
future of Vance's six-year-old son Joe. Yet this 
method is even less satisfactory than the other; 
because, at this rate the epitome would run to 
several thousand words ; and even then it would 
fail to explain why the heroine, Lossie, re- 
mains in our thoughts as the embodiment of all 
that is essentially feminine and good and lovable. 
The secret of her charm eludes us : there is no 
single verbal description that sets her plainly be- 
fore us with the blunt frankness of detail such as 
one finds in a passport. We see her through the 
eyes of the men who love her ; we see her through 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 39 

the gentle witchery of her spoken words, and 
through the influence she diffuses around her. 
And perhaps the secret lies in this: that because 
she is surrounded by this sort of halo of vague- 
ness, each one of us is free to picture her after 
the fancy of his own heart. 

Alice-f or- Short is in one sense a companion 
piece to Joseph Vance. This time, instead of a 
boy, it is a little girl who is rescued from the gut- 
ter and adopted by well-to-do people; instead of 
owing her good luck to a drunken father, half 
killed in a fair fight, she receives her blessing in 
disguise through the murder of her drunken 
mother, whose husband completes his task by com- 
mitting suicide. Alice, both as a child and later, 
as she approaches maturity, is another of Mr. De 
Morgan's triumphs in feminine portraiture, a 
worthy companion piece to Lossie, yet not likely 
to usurp the latter's rightful priority in the affec- 
tions of the majority of readers. One feels that in 
in creating his first heroine, Mr. De Morgan gave 
us the best that there was in him, the favorite and 
most perfect of his dream-women; and in subse- 
quent books he has to content himself with stars 
of lesser magnitude, — much as Joseph Vance, 
when he found that Lossie was unattainable, must 
needs content himself with Janey. But the real 
reason why Alice-f or- Short does not wear quite 
as well as Joseph Vance, does not tempt us back 



40 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

to it for a second and third reading, is because, 
while still unmistakably Early- Victorian, it is not 
of the same sustained quality. Those who love 
their Thackeray may be fearlessly referred to Mr. 
De Morgan's earliest book; but Alice-for-Short is 
largely diluted with Wilkie Collins, — and Mr. De 
Morgan has not assimilated Collins so successfully 
as he has Thackeray. A suggestion of ghostly 
visitors, the skeleton of a young woman discov- 
ered in an ancient cellar, a whole history of a for- 
gotten crime glimpsed tantalizingly through frag- 
mentary evidence, — all this in itself is good 
material for a mystery tale, in which character 
counts for little and the mystery counts for every- 
thing. It is curious that an author to whom his 
personages are all so supremely alive, so personal, 
so closely interwoven into his affections, should 
not realize that the public finds his interest in 
them contagious, and needs no melodramatic hap- 
penings to hold its attention. Nevertheless, the 
author of Alice-for-Short deserves credit for a 
most effective method of finally unraveling the 
mystery: there is just one person living who holds 
the key to the vanished past, and she is a frail old 
woman of four score and upwards, who for sixty 
years has lived in body only, her mind being a 
blank. A daring surgical operation lifts the 
cloud from her brain, and makes it possible to fill 
in the gaps of the ancient story, and connect past 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 41 

causes with present consequences. The idea, of 
course, is not new, — for that matter, when do we 
ever run across any plot in fiction that has not 
been used before? There is, for instance, a close 
parallel in that now almost classic juvenile story, 
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates; and doubt- 
less a little thinking would bring to mind a num- 
ber of others. But one thing may be said with 
confidence: that no one has ever surpassed Mr. 
De Morgan in driving home a sense of the infinite 
tragedy of a woman, awakening from a sleep of 
sixty years, taking up life at the identical point 
at which her injured brain had ceased to record; 
taking for granted that a lifetime of youth and 
gladness and love still lies before her, and then 
little by little grasping the incredible, inexorable 
fact that all these treasures have slipped away 
from her, that she is old and wrinkled and hideous, 
a poor wreck of humanity, standing on the 
threshold of death before she has really begun to 
live. It is one of those rare episodes that refuse 
to be forgotten; and no critic does full justice to 
Mr. De Morgan who fails to give it a generous and 
heartfelt recognition. 

Having made one story hinge upon the 
suspended consciousness of an old woman, Mr. De 
Morgan apparently told himself that it would not 
be a bad idea to repeat the experiment by sub- 
stituting for the old woman a young man, or at 



42 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

least a man still on the sunny side of middle age. 
Some critics have pronounced Somehow Good to 
be its author's crowning achievement: the present 
writer has seen this claim advanced a number of 
times, and every time has wondered vainly on what 
basis it was made. To be sure, Somehow Good is, 
of all six of his novels, the one which most nearly 
approaches a good piece of construction ; it sticks 
most closely to its central theme, it has the 
smallest number of superfluous characters. It is 
a book which can be summed up adequately in 
a couple of hundred words. Some twenty years 
before the story opens, a certain young woman, 
good enough at heart but vain and rather head- 
strong, went out alone to India, where her future 
husband awaited her coming. Through a series 
of mishaps, he failed to meet her on her first ar- 
rival, and she stayed for a time with a married 
friend, whose husband's marriage vows lay all 
too lightly on his conscience. Just what hap- 
pened during the days spent under his roof we are 
never explicitly told. — Mr. De Morgan has re- 
duced reticence to a fine art. But what hap- 
pened afterward was soon public property. Like 
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the girl lacked the 
courage to tell the truth before her marriage ; her 
husband, learning it later, promptly repudiated 
her and sued for a divorce, but lost his suit upon 
a technicality ; she returned to England, where her 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 43 

child was born, and where she continued to live 
quietly, under an assumed name. Twenty years 
later, a series of coincidences brings the husband 
to her door. An electric shock, received in the 
London " Tuppenny Tube," has left no visible 
physical injury, but has robbed him of his mem- 
ory. The wife, whom he once discarded and now 
does not recognize, takes him in; he soon falls 
in love with her, and they are remarried, and the 
problem of the story simplifies itself to this one 
issue: How soon will the husband recover his 
memory, and when he does, what will be his at- 
titude toward the woman whom he once cast off? 
It is a theme full of big possibilities, and on the 
whole Mr. De Morgan takes advantage of them. 
But it rests on a basis of coincidence, and bristles 
throughout with glaring improbabilities. If the 
hero had not chanced to meet in the " Tuppenny 
Tube " the girl who was his wife's daughter, 
though not his own; if she had not happened to 
tread on his foot, and thus been led into a most 
unlikely conversation with a stranger ; if he had 
not dropped a coin and fished for it under the 
seat, in spite of the conductor's repeated warn- 
ing ; and, finally, if the young girl had not obeyed 
a quixotic impulse and insisted upon taking this 
utter stranger to her home, the story would never 
have happened. And as for the second marriage, 
there are two obstinate little facts that insist on 



44 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

being remembered ; first that, although the woman 
knows that she has a right to marry, knows, in- 
deed, that no marriage ceremony is needed, other 
people do not share her knowledge; they simply 
know that she was once married and has never 
been legally divorced. And, secondly, the hus- 
band, to whom the past is a blank, admits that he 
may have been married before, and is haunted with 
a vague fear that, somewhere in the world, a wife 
and half a dozen children may be in sore want 
because of his disappearance. In real life a man, 
under such conditions, would shrink from a mar- 
riage which, so far as he knows, may mean bigamy. 
The people of the story are real enough; some of 
the minor characters are strokes of genius; the 
scandal-loving " Other Major," for instance, with 
his interminable " I don't mind tellin' you! Only, 
look here, my dear boy, don't you go puttin' it 
about that / told you anythin'. You know I 
make it a rule — a guidin' rule — never to say any- 
thin^ '*; and again, that delightfully literal-minded 
German, Baron Kreutzkammer, who, when a lady 
remarks, " How sweet the singing sounds under 
the starlight," corrects her by observing, " It 
would sount the same in the taydime. The fibra- 
tions are the same." Yes, the characters are 
real, delightfully so ; it is what they do at certain 
crucial moments that fails to carry conviction. 
Yet, in justice to Mr. De Morgan, it is only 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 45 

right to add that the foregoing judgment of 
Somehow Good by no means represents the con- 
sensus of critical opinion regarding its relative 
importance among his novels. There has been, 
on the contrary, a strong tendency not merely to 
recognize it as the best of his volumes, but to hail 
it as a message of good cheer, a piece of fine 
optimism regarding the possible forgiveness of an 
erring wife and her social rehabilitation, as wel! 
as that of the innocent but nameless daughter. 
Now, it is true that Mr. De Morgan has suc- 
ceeded in manufacturing a situation, in which, if 
we grant him all his conditions precedent, his 
amazing coincidents and interventions of fate, it is 
possible to accept the final outcome as fairly 
plausible. But the inherent improbability of the 
whole complex structure leaves upon the thought- 
ful mind much the same impression as though Mr. 
De Morgan had said, "Yes, there is just one 
possible case out of a million, in which infidelity 
and illegitimacy may be condoned ; but it requires 
a series of little miracles as difficult of accomplish- 
ment as that of the camel and the needle's eye." 

The next volume, in order of time. It Never Can 
Happen Again, is in point of form a reversion to 
Mr. De Morgan's early manner in its prolixity of 
style and multiplicity of themes. It has one cen- 
tral issue clearly emphasized in the title, but 
requiring in the narrative itself some little con- 



46 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

scious effort to disinter it from beneath numerous 
other overlappings. The significance of the title 
is to be found in the well-known peculiarity of the 
English marriage law regarding a deceased wife's 
sister. Alfred Challis, a successful young nov- 
elist, has defied public opinion by actually going 
through the marriage ceremony with Marianne, 
who, although only a half-sister of his deceased 
wife, comes so nearly within the letter of the pro- 
hibited degree, that it is tacitly conceded in social 
circles that she is an " impossible person," whom 
it will not do to receive. Consequently, Challis, 
whose profession as a writer of novels of high life 
requires that he shall mingle freely with the upper 
circles, finds himself obliged not only to accept 
invitations which ignore his wife, but to overlook 
the slight thus put upon her and to manufacture 
a fund of conventional and formulaic excuses for 
her non-appearance, which deceive neither himself 
nor society at large. Now it happens through a 
curious series of accidents, which no amount of 
structural cleverness can quite make plausible, that 
Marianne's deceased sister was, after all, not 
Challis's legal wife. The disclosure of this little 
fact immediately makes Marianne's social position 
beyond reproach, even in the eyes of the strictest, 
most conservative adherents to the Church of 
England. The fact that recent acts of Parlia- 
ment have changed the marriage law regarding a 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 47 

deceased wife's sister, furnishes the justification 
for Mr. De Morgan's title. But one wonders 
whether there is not a certain intentional and un- 
derlying irony in Mr. De Morgan's use of the 
phrase ; because it is impossible for any thought- 
ful person to read this book without realizing 
that while the story may not again be duplicated 
in the letter, the tendency of real life is to dupli- 
cate it continuously in spirit. Whenever cir- 
cumstances make it possible for a brilliant, at- 
tractive, and rather famous man to be lionized by 
fashionable society, invited to an unceasing round 
of dinners, receptions, and week-end parties, while 
his wife is systematically ignored by a well- 
organized social boycott, the seeds of family dis- 
cord are inevitably sown ; and when, — as is almost 
sure to happen sooner or later, — such a man en- 
counters some young woman who chooses to pity 
him and give him her sympathy, the seeds of dis- 
cord take root and sprout with amazing fertility. 
One cannot read this book without being once 
again impressed with Mr. De Morgan's ability to 
demonstrate the importance of little things, to 
show us how the first vague doubts and discords 
germinate and grow; and how, not only for the 
people in this story, but for every one of us, there 
is at each hour of the day a choice of actions that 
apparently matters little, but that actually may 
make a vital and life-long difference. It Never 



48 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

Can Happen Again is essentially a wise book, and 
its chief wisdom lies in proving that while we may 
learn to be independent of fate in large matters 
and rise superior to the big fluctuations of success 
and failure, we can never escape from the tyranny 
of the gnat-like swarms of trivial circumstances. 
The hackneyed phrase, " crowded canvas," 
seems curiously inadequate to describe the al- 
most unwieldy mass of social portraiture in this 
volume, its spacious and kaleidoscopic pictures of 
English life that constantly fade into a blur of 
dim vistas, along thronging thoroughfares and 
down crowded and ofttimes unsavory alleys. 
Whatever underlying purpose Nature may have 
in her working-out of life, the pattern is too vast 
for human comprehension to grasp. In our 
actual, daily experience, much that vitally con- 
cerns us seems hopelessly haphazard. In Mr. De 
Morgan's lack of art, or perhaps it is fairer to 
say, his deliberate intent to ignore art, there is 
at times a certain resultant realism that by its 
very disorder and lack of plotting approximates 
more closely to the truth of actuality than any 
amount of minute and purposed planning can ever 
come. It is a dangerous method ; carried too far 
and too boldly, it leads to artistic anarchy. Yet 
sometimes, as in this particular book of Mr. De 
Morgan's, it achieves results that could hardly be 
gained in any other way. 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 49 

It would not be fair to leave this volume with- 
out a passing word of tribute to an interwoven 
thread of interest, second only to the main issue 
of the story: namely, the pathetic love of the 
blind beggar, Jim Coupland, for his little six-year 
daughter, Lizarann, and the details of their life 
of poverty in the unsavory cul-de-sac known as 
Tallack Street. It may be freely conceded that 
in drawing certain humble and needy, yet none the 
less lovable types of Cockney, Mr. De Morgan 
stands to-day almost without a rival; and Lizar- 
ann, with her precocious wisdom and patient 
bravery, and Jim, the father, a hopeless wreck in 
early manhood, with nothing to hold him to life 
but his memories of the wife he has lost, and his 
fears for the child whose face he will never see, — 
these characters somehow fasten themselves so 
closely upon our hearts that, at least while we 
read, we forget to ask whether Mr. De Morgan 
can construct well or ill, and think of him only 
in sheer gratitude for his possession of the magic 
touch that makes us feel the kinship of humbler 
humanity. 

There remain two recent volumes. An Affair of 
Dishonor and A Likely Story, both of which may 
be dismissed quite briefly, as not belonging in the 
same class with Mr. De Morgan's earlier work. 
The fault with An Affair of Dishonor is, as al- 
ready suggested, not that it is an historical 



50 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

novel, but that, as such, it lacks distinction. In 
volumes like Joseph Vance and Alice-for-Short 
and It Never Can Happen Again he produced 
work of a unique quality ; whether we like them or 
not, we cannot fail to recognize that they are 
sui generis, that they cannot even have successful 
imitators. To have been equally successful in the 
vein of historical romance, Mr. De Morgan would 
have had to produce a volume similar in magnitude 
to Maurice Hewlett's Richard-Yea-and-Nay, or 
Alfred Ollivant's The Gentleman. Instead, he 
was content to write a book which, in manner and 
in substance, is easily outrivaled by the work of 
a dozen present-day writers, ranging from Conan 
Doyle to Max Pemberton. An Affair of Dishonor 
puts the heaviest tax upon our credulity of any of 
Mr. De Morgan's novels. It asks us to believe that 
after a young man has so far violated the laws 
of hospitality as to abduct his host's daughter, 
and is challenged by the outraged father, furi- 
ously determined upon avenging her lost honor, 
he adds the father's death to his earlier crime, 
and so skilfully keeps the truth from the girl that 
for long months she continues to live with him, 
wondering, though not too curiously, why her 
father does not write that he forgives her, and 
why no news of any kind comes from him. Of 
course, in the days before the advent of railways 
and telegrams, news traveled slowly ; in those days 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 51 

also human life was comparatively cheap, and a 
man's disappearance did not provoke the hue and 
cry, was not proclaimed in the flaunting headlines, 
that would follow to-day. None the less, even in 
what Mr. De Morgan has defined as " Pre-Crom- 
welhan " times, it required an extraordinary 
number of coincidences and interventions of fate to 
keep the heroine unenlightened; and after all, the 
whole theme is so unsavory and so artificial, that 
the reader is well justified in asking: Was it 
worth while? 

Mr. De Morgan takes much credit to himself 
that A Likely Story has been boiled down to the 
conventional length of the average English novel. 
Frankly, however, he is not entitled to credit, be- 
cause the theme is so slight that it scarcely merits 
ampler treatment than that of a short story. A 
sixteenth century Italian portrait is in an artist's 
studio, for the purpose of repairs, and happens 
to witness, — if one may use the phrase regarding 
an inanimate object, — a certain scene between the 
artist and a servant girl, Sairah, and also the 
quarrel between the artist and his wife about this 
same servant, which leads to a separation and a 
hint at divorce. Now this picture is quite a re- 
markable one, and one evening when a certain 
imaginative little old gentleman is facing it, and 
dreaming over the fitful blaze of a wood fire, he 
finds himself listening to an astonishing story 



52 WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

which the hps of this portrait tell him, a story of 
jealousy and cruelty and revenge enacted centuries 
earlier in Italy. Incidentally, the portrait tells of 
the foolish quarrel between the artist and his wife, 
and expresses a wish to reconcile them. So the 
little old gentleman, not quite knowing whether 
the portrait's story is a dream or an actuality, is 
instrumental in having a photograph of the pic- 
ture sent to the artist's wife; and she, in turn, 
holding the photograph between herself and the 
firelight, hears the self -same story from the lips of 
the photograph, and knows that her husband was 
wrongly blamed. It is an amusing story, but one 
impossible to take seriously. It would almost 
seem as though its author were deliberately per- 
petrating a joke upon the public. 

In conclusion, it remains only to be said that, 
if we regard these six books without bias, refusing 
to be influenced either by prejudice or partisan- 
ship, they show, with the one exception of It Never 
Can Happen Again, a steady deterioration. Each 
of Mr. De Morgan's volumes has its own cham- 
pions, and naturally the critic who cares for good 
technique will feel more kindly toward the later 
volumes, which show a gain in that direction. But 
he should be taken, not for what he might have 
been, but for what he is. As Mr. Boynton has 
aptly phrased it, he has " more in common with 
Dr. Holmes than with Mr. Pinero." For more than 



WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 53 

half a century he has been studying people, ab- 
sorbing life, formulating his own philosophy; 
through all these years, his thoughts have been 
slowly ripening, like a rare old wine. And when 
he first brought them forth, in Joseph Vance, he 
served them, like a rare old wine, in the old bottle, 
— his manner harmonized with his matter. Alice- 
for-Short was still from the same old vintage, 
but blended with another, less full-bodied stock. 
And after that, one feels with each successive 
volume, that the supply in the bin is running low ; 
it has to be diluted with a younger wine that has 
not had time to mature. For there is always one 
saddening little fact about those rare old vintages, 
— there is so very, very little of them to be had. 
But let no one assume that this is said in a spirit 
of ingratitude. Had Mr. De Morgan never writ- 
ten another line after Joseph Vance, his fame 
would still rest on an assured foundation. No 
future success or failure can amplify or diminish 
its fair fame. And even though it be an an- 
achronism, we of the twentieth century should be 
the more grateful, since it enables us to claim for 
ourselves the honor which, in point of form and 
substance, would otherwise have belonged to the 
nineteenth. 



MAURICE HEWLETT 

Theke are some authors whose good fortune it is 
to go steadily forward along a fairly straight and 
evenly ascending path year by year, fulfilling the 
promise which it required no great critical insight 
to discover in their earlier works nor great bold- 
ness to point out. There are others who, possessed 
it may be of even greater gifts, but erratic and un- 
even in workmanship, follow a tortuous route, full 
of unexpected turnings and retraced steps. No 
sooner has literary dogmatism ventured to assign 
them a definite place in the current movement than 
they riot oflp on some tangent pathway, hotly chas- 
ing some new bubble of reputation. Mr. Maurice 
Hewlett serves admirably as a case in point. To- 
day it would seem incongruous to bracket his 
name with those of Rudyard Kipling and Joseph 
Conrad, as pioneers in a new movement in fiction. 
The Kipling of Rewards and Fairies, the Conrad 
of bombs and nihilism and secret service, the new 
Hewlett, the would-be Meredithian, have drifted 
too hopelessly apart. Yet there was a short pe- 
riod, less than a decade ago, when, in spite of wide 
differences in theme, in treatment and in outlook 

54 




MAURICE HEWLETT 



MAURICE HEWLETT 55 

upon life, the respective authors of Kim and Nos- 
tromo and Richard Yea-and-Nay seemed to form 
a little group apart from their contemporaries. 
And the kinship between them lay not merely in a 
certain dynamic quality of words, an ability to 
wring new and subtle meanings out of old and well- 
worn forms of speech, a trick of making you see, 
behind and beyond the printed page, a lengthening 
vista of thoughts unspoken, oftentimes unspeak- 
able. It was something that went deeper than 
all this and that showed itself in an epic bigness of 
theme, an irrepressible virility of thought, an au- 
dacious iconoclasm of precedent, overriding and 
bearing down established principles of technique, 
and justifying the lawlessness by the results. 
Dangerous models they all three were, for the 
slavish imitator of small mentality. But there 
was a rich fund of new artifice to be acquired from 
each of them, by those who had the eyes to see and 
the ability to apply. 

Of the three, Mr. Hewlett had, it would seem, by 
far the hardest road to travel and under the heav- 
iest handicap, if he was to stir us to a tingling 
sense of reality. Kipling in India, Conrad in 
Africa and the South Sea Islands, could freely 
let their pens run riot in pyrotechnic outbursts 
of local color; life in all its primeval crudity, 
the raw, unmixed materials of fiction, lay on every 
side of them, barbarism and civilization in all de- 



56 MAURICE HEWLETT 

grees of transition ; they had but to paint what 
they saw, and could scarcely keep pace with the 
tropical luxuriance around them. Their pictures 
carried overwhelming conviction because of the 
white heat of first-hand impressions, the unmis- 
takable poignancy of a chose vecue. Mr. Hew- 
lett's stories, on the contrary, — at least down to 
the point when, with Halfway House, he tempo- 
rarily went grievously astray, — are largely of the 
stuff that dreams are made of; they tell of scenes 
and of people that he has never visited, save 
through the medium of musty volumes and faded 
frescos ; because the scenes of his stories, or at 
least of such as it is a delight to remember, are 
the world of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, 
and his heroes and heroines are men and women 
whose hearts have been for centuries a handful of 
dust. And yet, such is the magic thrall that he 
succeeds in throwing over his readers that, when 
still hot and breathless from a swift, tumultuous 
reading of Richard Yea-and-Nay or The Queen's 
Quair, one is almost tempted to fling down the 
gauntlet and challenge all comers to deny that it 
is Maurice Hewlett, rather than Joseph Conrad 
or Rudyard Kipling, who excels in picturing the 
tumultuous joys and sorrows of life. 

Here is obviously something of a paradox, which 
clamors for an explanation. How has such an 
obviously bookish person, a literary dilettante, 



MAURICE HEWLETT 57 

with the erudition of an archeologist, and a pre- 
ciosity of style that he has nurtured as one might 
nurture a rare orchid, learned to galvanize dead 
bones and moldering dust into an anguished 
quiver of pain and pleasure? His very language, 
vocabulary, style and rhythm are redolent of the 
night lamp and the study table; often he uses 
phrases like fine embroidery, traceries and scroll- 
work in an architecture of words. Tapestry Novel 
is a term that was first coined to fit the class of 
books represented by The Forest Lovers; and it 
admirably expressed the impression conveyed of an 
almost feminine delicacy of workmanship, as 
though each phrase were a separate knot carefully 
chosen and tied and trimmed, in the slow, laborious 
progress of the woven picture. And the perennial 
wonder of Mr. Hewlett's art centers in his power 
of reincarnation, his ability to show us knights and 
ladies of olden times, who have so obviously just 
trooped forth from dim and crumbling hangings, 
suddenly flushing into the warmth of life and 
youth and riotous passion. Undeniably, he 
achieves his effects. The chief distinction which 
marks his volumes as something apart, something 
differing both in quality and in kind from the cur- 
rent mass of so-called historical fiction, is his in- 
imitable trick of breathing the breath of life into 
the famous figure-heads of history ; making you 
feel the human pulse-beat still throbbing under the 



58 MAURICE HEWLETT 

yellowed page and faded writing of musty chron- 
icles ; discovering in cracked and time-dimmed por- 
traits some trick of the glance, some luring curve 
of lips, some coquetry of dress or ornament that 
makes the human frailty of these long dead women 
a living thing, to touch us with a personal appeal. 
A war that cost the flower of the land, a battle that 
changed the map of Europe, interest Mr. Hewlett 
merely as clues to the hearts of men and women in 
high places, whose whim begot the strife. And 
because he possesses this magic power of visualizing 
the pomps and pageantries, the revelries and the 
bloodshed of those dim and far-off times, reading 
whole histories from a faded fresco or a rust- 
stained coat-of-mail, it is the most natural thing 
in the world to conclude that Mr. Hewlett must 
love for their own sakes these relics of the past 
that give him his material : — that he must never be 
so happy as when roaming through dismantled 
palaces and venerable abbeys, museums of old 
paintings, old furniture, old armor. Such is the 
mental picture that, on the evidence of his nov- 
els, one is quite likely to form of Mr. Hewlett's 
tastes and pastimes : and yet, as he has elsewhere 
taken pains to tell us, nothing could be further 
from the truth. 

Somewhere in the pages of The Road in Tus- 
cany^ Mr. Hewlett, having occasion to quote from 
Villani's History of Florence ^ tersely dismisses it 



MAURICE HEWLETT 59 

as " a charming story, which gives us as much in- 
sight into the good Villani as into Florentine be- 
ginnings." This is an apt phrase, and one worth 
chnging to and making over, to fit the coiner of it ; 
for The Road in Tuscany is also one of those rare 
books possessing charm, and one which gives no 
less insight into Mr. Hewlett himself than into the 
hearts of all the dead and living Tuscans about 
whom he writes so understandinglj. Indeed, it 
is not too much to say that, when the time comes 
to judge the life-work of Maurice Hewlett in its 
entirety, The Road in Tuscany will stand with The 
Queen's Quair, as one of the two volumes which his 
future biographer cannot afford to neglect ; the 
one, because it is the crowning achievement of a 
unique method in historical romance; the other, 
because it gives the key to the peculiar workings 
of the mind which wrought that method. 

It teaches us, for instance, that as a matter of 
fact Mr. Hewlett has scant interest in ancient mon- 
uments, churches, palaces, the works of men's 
hands, excepting as clues to the men themselves ; 
and that, unless it be a locomotive drawing a 
train of cars, there is scarcely anything towards 
which he feels a stronger hostility than an art gal- 
lery. The greatest of galleries, not excepting the 
UfRzi itself, are nothing more than " so many 
leagues of imprisoned pictures torn from their 



60 MAURICE HEWLETT 

sometime homes and flowering-places, and pinned 
to the walls. . . . They belong to the Holy of 
Holies, and here they are brazening it out, like 
tavern signs ! " And not only art, but history and 
literature as well, interest him chiefly as means to 
an end, " short cuts to the human heart," whether 
in Italy or out of it ; while " to talk of a history 
of Tuscany is to talk nonsense." The most he 
will concede to any of the Tuscan towns is " a 
biography which is the sum of all the biographies 
of all its unknown citizens." These worthy burgh- 
ers and thrifty housewives, the Donna Bertas and 
Ser Martinos of proverbial speech, are more to 
him than all the poets and painters that Italy can 
boast. " Learn," he preaches, " to look upon 
cities, great buildings, pompous monuments, gilded 
altar-pieces, carved Madonnas, as so much har- 
vest for the eye, neither the best nor the worst. 
The best is a wise man or a pretty woman, the 
worst a railway or a bore. There is plenty of 
room between these extremes for altar-pieces." 
Yes, man delights Mr. Hewlett; aye, and 
woman too, a pretty woman especially, and 
smilingly he confesses it. He will at any time 
interrupt himself, in the midst of more important 
matters, to show you a girl in a window, " leaning 
her bare arms there and crying strangely inti- 
mate matter to another across two streets, singing 
the pretty names of things not pretty, caressing 



MAURICE HEWLETT 61 

her friend from afar." And at a turn of the page, 
3^ou will find him chatting with equal relish and 
equal intimate assurance, of Dante's Beatrice, no 
symbol of theology in his eyes, but a real, living 
woman, with a personal and physical appeal, a 
woman capable of love and of jealousy too. " Who 
she was or what is no matter. ... It is enough 
for us to be sure that she was lovely and good, had 
green eyes and died young. To which I add for 
my private contentation, — that she was a little 
woman." 

There in a single brief quotation, — indeed, in 
the five short words that make up the tag-end of 
it, " she was a little woman," — we have the key to 
some of Mr. Hewlett's strongest effects, the clue 
to his gift for making vanished centuries live again, 
and to his failure to picture the life of to-day 
convincingly. The secret, of course, lies in the 
trick of the small, familiar touch, the trick of 
throwing in some detail that helps us to see, by 
appealing to our own personal experience. An 
author may be taking you through the strange, 
tortuous by-ways of some oriental city, dazzling 
and bewildering you with a medley of colors, scents 
and sounds, and then suddenly add the soothing, 
commonplace detail, " it was a gray morning and 
the streets were muddy." It tells you nothing of 
real moment regarding the strange city, yet it 
gives you at once a sense of seeing more clearly, for 



62 MAURICE HEWLETT 

it conjures up other gray days when you yourself 
have strayed through muddy streets in unfamiliar 
towns, and seen odd buildings silhouetted against 
the leaden sky. Of course it is a trick, albeit an 
unconscious one, serving to bridge the gulf of time 
and space, and delude us into believing, for the 
moment, that we too can clearly visualize the un- 
known. In the use of this trick Mr. Hewlett is an 
adept; and the reason why his use of it is mar- 
velously effective in a story of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, and comparatively ineffective in a story of 
the twentieth, is fairly simple to explain. The 
familiar touch is really a makeshift, an attempt to 
find some common measure for things really incom- 
mensurate, to help us to form an approximate pic- 
ture of something unseen. It ceases to be of help 
in a description of things within our own intimate 
experience. To mention that a certain thing hap- 
pened on Wednesday, or that yesterday morning 
the first strawberries were in market, immediately 
makes a remote and fantastic setting tingle with 
actuality ; whereas, in a story laid in our town and 
day it is merely one added detail that merges into 
the rest. If you tell a child, who has never visited 
a menagerie, that an elephant is a big animal with 
a long nose, you give him something for his imagi- 
nation to work upon; he may not really picture 
anything within a thousand miles of an elephant, 
but the important point is that he thinks he does. 



MAURICE HEWLETT 63 

But if you tell him that a cat is a furry animal with 
prickly feet, you may, to be sure, evoke a memory 
of past discomfort, but the familiar touch has 
failed to give him any sense of new knowledge. And 
there is one more equally important distinction 
that helps to throw light upon Mr. Hewlett: we 
might, in describing an elephant, make several 
blunders, but they would not prevent the child's 
imagination from seizing upon the detail of the 
long nose ; but if we chanced to be inaccurate re- 
garding the cat, the one familiar touch, the prickly 
feet, would serve only to make our errors stand 
out more glaringly. 

It is a matter of instinct, — and a true one, — 
with most of us, to feel, as we look at old-time por- 
traits, Rembrandt's men, Botticelli's women, that 
there is a remoteness about them not wholly due to 
quaint costumes and faded pigments, but far more 
vitally to a physical and temperamental difference, 
shown in an alien cast of features, a different arch 
of brow and contour of cheek and chin. We won- 
der how men and women so different from the mod- 
ern type would meet the emergencies of life, and 
whether in their hopes and fears, their loves and 
hatreds there was not an element with which we 
would find ourselves out of sympathy. Mr. Hew- 
lett solves this difficulty with the calmness of omnis- 
cience. He brushes aside the differences as though 
they were non-existent. Human nature, he seems 



64. MAURICE HEWLETT 

to say, is a constant quantity, the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever. He makes his men and 
women, of whatever nationality and epoch, speak 
and act from big, basic, primitive emotions, shows 
them to us as strong, simple, ardent souls, dom- 
inated by some one ruling passion, symbolic of 
some single vice or virtue. They live fierce, tu- 
multuous lives, in fierce, tumultuous times ; and 
because they and their epoch lie outside of 
our experience, we yield to Mr. Hewlett's hyp- 
notic power and give him credence, especially 
when he adroitly reminds us by his small, familiar 
touches, that his King Richard and his Queen 
Mary are at heart just human beings, like the man 
next door, or the girl across the street. But when 
he leaves the vantage-ground of the remote past 
and ventures to show us fantastic figures, crea- 
tures of legendary romance, in modern garb, 
against the incongruous background of present- 
day England, no amount of familiar touches can 
gloss over the glaring, blatant unfamiliarity of 
his picture as a whole. And this is why, with all 
his art, Mr. Hewlett's modern stories refuse to 
be alive. 

But since Mr. Hewlett's blunders have been few 
and his triumphs many, it will be no more than a 
matter of simple justice to touch only cursorily 
upon his modern trilogy, and to linger in the sin- 



MAURICE HEWLETT 65 

cerest admiration over certain unchallenged and 
incomparable masterpieces. His earliest volumes, 
Earthwork out of Tuscany and The Forest Lovers, 
need not detain us. They were enough for the 
founding of a reputation, a challenge for the 
world's attention that could not be ignored, an 
earnest of better and bigger things to come. In 
the former of these two volumes, the author re- 
vealed the country of his predilection, the setting 
of what we must recognize as the volumes that he 
has written most directly from his heart. In The 
Forest Lovers, he allowed himself, more than any- 
where else, to riot at will in the realm of pure fan- 
tasy, to create an imaginary world peopled by men 
and women of Arthurian legend. The story of 
Prosper le Gai and how he wed Iseulte la Desi- 
reuse, reputed witch though she was, to save her 
from the hangman, and all the delicate and charm- 
ing idyl that follows, is wrought with a rare and 
welcome artistry. It revealed the author as a 
stylist of a new order, with a delicate sense of 
prose rhythm, and a reverence for the value 
of words akin to that of a jeweler for the value of 
precious stones. Not that he fully mastered in 
these earliest volumes the style for which he strove. 
A lack of smoothness, here and there, an occasional 
archaism so violent as to be almost grotesque, be- 
trayed the labor of his art to conceal itself. But 
it paved the way to greater mastery. It formed 



66 MAURICE HEWLETT 

the apprenticeship that led to the fuller fruition of 
Richard Yea-and-Nay. 

The term " historical novel " has been so often 
profaned that one instinctively shrinks from ap- 
plying it to such noble pieces of literary art as 
Mr. Hewlett has given us in his two biggest novels, 
Richard Yea-and-Nay and The Queen's Quair. 
Yet what alternative name is there to give to vol- 
umes that picture historic scenes and royal per- 
sonages with such rare vividness and power? With 
the epoch of the Crusades for its stage setting, 
and the figure of the Lion-Hearted King for its 
focus of interest, the historic aspect of Richard 
Yea-and-Nay refuses to be ignored. Yet no 
amount of careful documentation, no degree of 
fidelity to early chronicles, of painstaking accu- 
racy in mere names and dates could have created 
that atmosphere of the Middle Ages with which 
every page is redolent. The truth is that Mr. 
Hewlett is at heart a poet, with all a poet's de- 
light in verbal form and color, in the caressing 
assonance of fluent syllables, the rise and fall of 
cadenced sentences. His Richard Yea-and-Nay 
is really a sort of medieval epic, a chanson de 
geste in prose, full of the sensuous word-coloring 
of jongleur and troubadour, the spectacular opu- 
lence of tourneys and coronations, the valor of 
battle and of siege. Considered as a study of hu- 
man emotions, however, the book is essentially mod- 



MAURICE HEWLETT 67 

ern In its appeal, thanks to that habit of mind 
already alluded to, which makes Mr. Hewlett rep- 
resent human nature as essentially the same at all 
epochs. And that his interest in the psychological 
side of his story is far keener than in the more 
spectacular brilliance of his picture, he himself 
sets forth in unmistakable terms : 

Differing from the Mantuan as much in sort as in 
degree, I sing less the arms than the man, less the 
panoply of some Christian king offended than the 
heart of one in its urgent private transports ; 

and to such good purpose does he sing the man 
that the varying fortunes of war, the downfall or 
the victory of Saracens, the fate of Christendom 
itself become for the hour a matter of less moment 
than the inner conflicts of the heart of King Rich- 
ard, — Count Richard he is when we first meet 
him, — and his love for Jehane Saint-Pol, Jehane of 
the Fair Girdle. They are a noble pair, as Mr. 
Hewlett has conceived them, tragic figures caught 
in the toils of destiny, very real, thanks to a rare 
artistry of words yet unimaginable outside their 
special setting of time and place. It is impossible 
in a brief epitome to do even scant justice to the 
intimate drama enacted between these two. It is 
the chronicle of a woman's utter self-abnegation, 
her sacrifice of love, of honor, personal liberty and 



68 MAURICE HEWLETT 

the rights of her child, for the sake of the man who 
has awakened her to the j oy of living. 

She was the creature of his love, in and out hy now 
the work of his hands. God had given her a magnifi- 
cent body, but Richard had made it glow. God had 
made her soul, a fair room; but his love had filled 
it with light, decked it with flowers and such artful 
furniture. He, in fact, as she very well knew, had 
given her the grace to deal queenly with herself. He 
knew that she would have strength to deny him, hav- 
ing learned the hardihood to give him her soul. Fate 
had carried her too young into the arms of the most 
glorious prince in the world. . . . What was to be- 
come of herself.'' Mercy upon her, I believe she never 
thought of that. His honor was her necessity. 

She is an extraordinary creation, this Jehane 
Bel-Vezir, and one of whom Mr. Hewlett himself is 
obviously much enamored, for he has lavished all 
the riches of his art upon her. It would be difficult 
to find in modern fiction a v/oman uniting such 
prodigality of love, such fierce abandonment to 
passion, with so much nobility of soul, such self- 
immolation when the need comes. In her, as once 
again in Queen Mary, Mr. Hewlett has pictured a 
woman from whose spell it is difficult to escape. 
She holds henceforth a place in each reader's 
Dream of Fair Women, this girl whose fate it was 
to love King Richard, that " blend of German dog 
and Angevin cat," whom " all women loved and 



MAURICE HEWLETT 69 

very few men ;" who saw from the start so clearly 
and unfalteringly that there could be no lasting 
union between him and her; and who had the 
strength to deny her own emotions, but could not 
stem the imperious current of his. The story 
moves with a swiftness of phrase, a tumult of in- 
cident that gives a sense of breathlessness. Rich- 
ard wins a first brief victory over his twofold 
nature, leaves Jehane and goes to his father, in 
order to accomplish his betrothal to Alois, sister 
of Philip of France. But on arriving, he finds, in- 
stead of a joyous bride, " a white furtive, creeping 
girl, from whose hair peered out a pair of haunted 
eyes," eyes that half reveal to him a certain 
grim secret that causes him to repudiate the alli- 
ance in hot haste, and madly ride back, to inter- 
rupt another man's bridal and snatch Jehane from 
the very altar rail. Then follow the six " burn- 
ing days of honeymoon," the unforgettable mid- 
night siege in the wooden tower, the leper's ghastly 
prophecy, the swift strokes of fate that crown 
Richard king of England, — and then Jehane's com- 
pact with the Queen-Mother, the " flinty old shrew 
of Aquitaine," who none the less mingled her tears 
with Jehane's ; her surrender of Richard to the 
Church and Christendom, and his final " Words of 
Yea," by which he consents to set aside Jehane, — 
mother of his child which is to be, although of this 
fact he is not yet aware, — and marry the " little 



70 MAURICE HEWLETT 

Spaniard," Berangere. When he does know, the 
lion awakens, and then begins the " Book of Nay." 
Out of a red haze of war and bloodshed, certain 
facts emerge with poignant clearness: Conrad 
of Montferrat's plot to murder Richard through 
aid of the emissaries of the Old Man of Musse, 
Lord of the Assassins, " who lived on Lebanon and 
was most wise in the matter of women ;" Jehane's 
gift of herself as ransom price of King Richard ; 
the passing of Montferrat, and the dead hand 
shown in evidence ; and the final great scene of 
Richard's death, in presence of the three women 
who marked epochs in his life. There are Alois, 
whom he had scorned to take as cast-off mistress 
of his brother John ; Jehane, whom he would have 
married, had she not renounced him; Berangere, 
whom he had married, " so far as the Church could 
provide," and forthwith deserted for the Crusades, 
— Berangere, whom he had wronged in having 
given her " the right to anything." " To give it 
you I thieved, and in taking it again I thieved 
again." Listen to Jehane's words, as she kneels 
beside the dying king: 

" Dost thou question my rights Berangere/' she said 
fiercely, " to kiss a dead man, to love the dead and 
speak greatly of the dead ? Which of us three women, 
thinkest thou, knoweth what report to make concern- 
ing this beloved, thou, or Alois, or I? Alois came, 
speaking of old sins; and you are here, plaining of 



MAURICE HEWLETT 71 

new sins; what shall I do^ now that I am here? Am 
I to speak of sin to come? Thou dear knight/' and 
she touched his head, " there is no more room for 
thy great sins, alas ! But I think that thou shalt 
leave behind thee some spark of fire." 

A wonderful, passionate, tumultuous book, burn- 
ing with a glowing fire of words, in structure some- 
what lawless and amorphous, with characters and 
incidents crowding and jostling on each other's 
heels, — and nevertheless, leaving at the end a crys- 
tal-clear presentment of an incarnate contradic- 
tion, a nature eternally at war with itself: 

So generous as he was, all the world might have 
loved him, as one loved him; and yet so arrogant of 
mind that the very largess he bestowed had a 
sting beneath it, as though he scorned to give less to 
creatures that lacked so much. All his faults and 
most of his griefs sprang from this rending apart of 
his nature. His heart cried Yea! to a noble motion. 
Then came his haughty head to suggest trickery, and 
bid him say Nay! to the heart's urgency. 

The Queen^s Quair, which followed Richard 
Yea-and-Nay after an interval of more than three 
years, deserves, even more than its predecessor, the 
appellation of " unique." One quality it has in 
common with the earlier volume: It leaves the 
reader quite indifferent as to how many other 
writers before him have handled the same theme. 



72 MAURICE HEWLETT 

The Richard of Mr. Hewlett may or may not be 
the Richard of history, or of Ivanhoe and The 
Talisman; but he is a living, breathing human 
being, a man whom we can see and under- 
stand, as we have never seen and understood the 
more shadowy Richard of history. Similarly, his 
Mary Stuart may not be the Mary Stuart of the 
old chroniclers or the modern poets; but he has 
made her a tangible reality, always more of a 
woman than a queen, — a slight, frail woman, way- 
ward, changeful and moody ; full of the witchery of 
her sex and desperately dependent upon human 
sympathy and adulation. In Richard Yea-and- 
Na^y Mr. Hewlett had a much easier task. He 
was less hampered by the recorded facts ; 
he could still give free play to his imagina- 
tion, without robbing the volume of its convincing 
quality. But the story of Mary Stuart is not 
merely a twice-told tale ; it has been told a hundred 
times. Every reader brings to the reading of this 
volume a knowledge of precisely what is destined 
to happen ; there are no surprises held in reserve ; 
and no magic of cunningly wrought phrases could 
cheat us into accepting a version at variance with 
the familiar facts. Nor has Mr. Hewlett ventured 
to disregard them. On the contrary, he seems to 
have studied the original sources with the con- 
scientious and exhaustive minuteness of a serious 
historian. He has saturated himself with the con- 



MAURICE HEWLETT 73 

tents of musty tomes and yellow letters ; the 
uniqueness of this work lies in the use that he has 
made of his materials. He seems so unhesitat- 
ingly sure of the psychological value of each one 
of these old chronicles and diaries and memoirs ; 
here is a writer, he tells us, who was mistaken; 
here is another who blundered badly, and a third 
who lied boldly and with malevolent purpose. 
Sometimes he will take a voluminous document, on 
which the methodical historian sets great store, 
and he will get from it just one suggestive fact, 
one single luminous phrase, and then fling it care- 
lessly aside, like a wrung-out rag. And again, 
he will seize upon some fugitive page, some half- 
forgotten letter, and absorb it greedily, turning 
and analyzing and dwelling upon it, until he tricks 
you into the belief that here at last is the heart 
of the mystery. And thus, without meddling with 
the accepted facts of history, he has so subtly and 
insidiously probed down below the surface and 
suggested secret motive of love and hatred, jeal- 
ousy, anger and shame, that the result is an inter- 
woven tissue of fact and fancy which only an his- 
torical expert could unravel. Probably not since 
the days of Herodotus have truth and fiction been 
more ingeniously blended. 

What strikes the reader most forcibly, however, 
on every page of The Queen's Quair, is that it 
is the supreme example of Mr. Hewlett's use of the 



74 MAURICE HEWLETT 

familiar touch, the final test of his power to make 
us see, — or think we do. He will take a dry-as- 
dust paragraph from some musty old chronicle, a 
mere catalogue of old Scotch names; and he will 
throw in a phrase here, a single adjective there, 
which will turn that catalogue of names into a 
portrait gallery of vivid, speaking likenesses. 
There is one passage almost at the outset of the 
book, which every reviewer is likely to quote, not 
merely because it is the portrait of Mr. Hewlett's 
heroine, but because it illustrates, better, perhaps, 
than any other paragraph in the whole volume, the 
wonderful and striking vividness that he can gain 
by the use of simple, every-day Anglo-Saxon 
words. A foreigner, reading it, might almost infer 
that English, like Chinese, was a monosyllabic lan- 
guage. 

A tall, slim girl, petted and pettish, pale yet not 
unwholesome, she looked like a flower of the heath, 
lax and delicate. Her skin — but more, the very flesh 
of her — seemed transparent, with color that warmed 
it from within, faintly, with a glow of fine rose. 
They said that when she drank you could see the red 
wine run like fire down her throat; and it may be 
partly believed. . . . The Cardinal, who was no 
rhapsodist, admitted her clear skin, but denied that 
she was a beautiful girl — even for a queen. Her 
nose, he judged, was too long, her lips were too thin, 
her eyes too narrow. He detested her trick of the 



MAURICE HEWLETT 75 

sidelong look. . . . Beautiful she may not have been; 
but fine^ fine she was all over — sharply^ exquisitely 
cut and modeled ; her sweety smooth chin^ her amorous 
lips^ bright red where all else was pale as a tinged 
rose; her sensitive nose; her broad, high brows; her 
neck, which two hands could hold, her small shoulders 
and bosom of a child. She had sometimes an intent, 
considering, wise look — the look of the Queen of De- 
sire, who knew not where to set the bounds of her 
need, but revealed to no one what that need was. 

" Her trick of the sidelong look," — there is one 
of those small familiar touches that have magic 
in them. It recalls at once a peculiarity in the 
eyes of more than one familiar portrait of the 
Queen of Scots, — a peculiarity that seemed to 
elude a definition. Now that Mr. Hewlett has put 
it into words, it fairly haunts us ; nowhere in the 
book can we get away from it ; at every turn of the 
page, we are asking ourselves to what extent the 
effect of the queen's words is enhanced by that 
trick of the sidelong glance. 

As to the story, there seems small profit in 
dwelling here upon what every reader knows in ad- 
vance; while the especial shadows and high lights 
added by Mr. Hewlett cannot be given at second 
hand. All the old, familiar figures enter and play 
their part, — names that have a halo of romance 
and poetry around them; the bevy of the queen's 
Marys ; Chatelard, and Darnley, and Rizzio ; the 



76 MAURICE HEWLETT 

whole host of Scottish lords, with Bothwell, like 
a malignant star, always in the ascendant. He is 
a well-drawn villain. Earl Bothwell; Mr. Hewlett 
shows no small self-satisfaction in filling in the 
lines ; there are times when he seems fairly to gloat 
over him: 

A galliard^ if ever there was one, flushed with rich 
blood, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh 
so happy and so prompt that the world, rejoicing to 
hear it, thought all must be well wherever he might 
be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, kept 
brave company bravely. His little eyes twinkled 
so merrily that you did not see they were like a 
pig's, sly and greedy at once, and blood-shot. 

And then follows another of those luminous little 
touches: "The bridge of his nose had been 
broken ; few observed it, or guessed at the brawl 
which must have given it to him." But if there 
is one little detail more significant, more luminous 
than all the others, about this Bothwell of the 
" great jowl," it is that of " some mockery latent 
in him, and the suspicion that whatever you said 
or did he would have you in derision." For it was 
this which " first drew Queen Mary to consider 
him," it was this v/hich kept him in her thoughts ; 
and indirectly, it was this which led them ulti- 
mately to wreak their mutual undoing. Of the end, 
it is best to let Mr. Hewlett tell in his own words : 



MAURICE HEWLETT 77 

Spited had he been by Fortune, without doubt. 
He had had the Crown and Mantle of Scotland in 
his pair of hands; having schemed for six years to 
get them, he had had them and felt their goodly 
weight; and here he was now in hiding, trusting for 
bare life to the help of men who had no reason to 
love him. Where, then, were his friends? He had 
none, nor ever had but one, — this fair, frail woman, 
whom he had desired for her store, and had emptied, 
and would now be rid of. 

If his was a sorry case, what was hers? Alas, 
the heart sickens to think of it. With how high a 
head came she in, she and her cohort of maids, to 
win wild Scotland! Where were they? They had 
received their crowns, but she had soiled and be- 
drabbled hers. They had lovers, they had children, 
they had troops of friends; but she, who had sought 
with panting mouth for very love, had had husbands 
who made love stink, and a child denied her, and no 
friend in Scotland but a girl and a poor boy. You 
say she had sought wrongly. I say she had over- 
mastering need to seek. Love she must; and if she 
loved amiss it was that she loved too well. You say 
that she misused her friends. I deny that a girl set 
up where she was could have any friends at all. She 
was a well of sweet profit, — the Honey-pot; and they 
swarmed about her for their meat like house-flies; 
and when that was got, and she drained dry, they 
departed by the window in clouds, to settle and fasten 
about the nearest provand they could meet with: 
carrion or honeycomb, man's flesh, dog's flesh or 
maid's flesh, what was it to them? In those dreadful 



78 MAURICE HEWLETT 

days of silent waiting at Borthwick, less than a month 
after marriage, I tell you very plainly that she was 
beggared of all she had in the world, and knew it. 

Beside these two books, all subsequent work 
of Mr. Hewlett's is in the nature of an anti-climax, 
some more, some less, but none of it attaining a 
similar amplitude of theme, a like commanding 
dignity of treatment. If it were not for fear of 
doing violence to a fair sense of proportion, it 
would be a pleasure to give some space to his 
shorter tales, to the Little Novels of Italy, The 
New Canterbury Tales, and the Fond Adventures, 
and more especially the first and the last of these 
three, for they are many of them flawless little 
gems of artistry, glowing with a sort of verbal 
opalescence. Every reader will have his own fa- 
vorites ; but to the present writer there is no one 
of these tales which it is such a pleasure 
to read and read again as that inimitable 
tale of early Florence, " Buondelmonte's Saga." 
To-day the man who, with his marriage 
day as good as set, should with scant cere- 
mony break off the alliance, for no better reason 
than that he had seen another woman's face 
that was better to his liking, might hear some 
hard things said of him; but the end need not 
be tragedy. In medieval Florence, it meant blood- 
shed, riots, a city rent asunder with civil strife. 



MAURICE HEWLETT 79 

How much of this saga is true, how much the coin- 
age of Mr. Hewlett's brain, he himself would prob- 
ably be puzzled to tell. He makes one feel curi- 
ously the remoteness of those vanished centuries, 
yet at the same time his pages tingle with vitality, 
as though reciting the happenings of yesterday. 
You see, as if in the flesh, Buondelmonte seeking 
to patch up an old family feud by forming an 
alliance with the Uberti; you see smoldering 
anger and black looks giving place to a strained 
and ceremonious courtesy. You see Buondelmonte, 
now that he is pledged, suddenly falling tumultu- 
ously in love with Eoreste Donati's younger 
daughter, Piccarda, and rashly concocting the first 
clumsy excuse that comes into his mind for break- 
ing off the alliance with the Uberti. You see the 
latter gathered in secret council weighing the evi- 
dence, anxious to be sure of the justice of their 
quarrel, sure that the affront has been deliberately 
put upon them. Then one more unforgettable 
scene; a lover in bridegroom's attire hasting to a 
rendezvous, waylaid at the bridge; a brief confu- 
sion of men and horses, huddled together; the flash 
of a knife or two ; a dead man, lying muffled in his 
cloak, and the whole city in an uproar. 

There are two or three other volumes which it 
seems worth while to mention somewhat in detail, 
before passing on to a brief estimate of Mr. Hew- 
lett's ill-starred attempt at novels of contempo- 



80 MAURICE HEWLETT 

rary life. These are The Fool Errant, Brazenhead 
the Great, and The Stooping Lady. The Fool 
Errant is a less pretentious book than the novels 
which preceded it ; there is a latent vein of whim- 
sical humor in it which some readers have found 
somewhat baffling; yet it is likely to bring a cer- 
tain quiet joy to those who have an epicurean 
taste for delicate workmanship in fiction. 

The " Fool Errant " of the title is one Francis 
Strelley, a young Englishman, sent by his father 
to Italy to complete his education and incidentally 
to be kept out of mischief, under the guardianship 
of Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, of the University of 
Padua. Dr. Lanfranchi is briefly summed up as a 
" disorderly genius, a huge, blotch-faced, tumble- 
bellied man, bullet-headed, bull-necked and with 
flashing eyes." Now it happens that this ungainly, 
panting behemoth of a man possesses a slender 
dainty little wife; "sparkling eyes, a delicate 
flush, quick breath, a shape at once pliant and 
audacious, flashing hands with which half her 
spells were woven — all these, and that wailing, 
dragging, comico-tragic voice, that fatal appeal of 
the child, trained by the wisdom of the wife, com- 
pleted the rout of our youth. Before supper was 
over he was her loyal slave." 

The opening chapter of The Fool Errant reads 
like the opening stanzas of Don Juan, with this 
diff'erence, that young Strelley was content to set 



MAURICE HEWLETT 81 

his lady high upon a pedestal and read aloud to 
her from the Commentaries of Villani and Mala- 
volti's History of Sienna. Then comes the mo- 
mentous night when the good Dr. Lanfranchi, ar- 
riving as an untimely interruption to the evening's 
reading, finds young Strelley stowed away in a 
closet, and quite naturally refuses to believe that 
he is there solely in pursuit of historical 
learning. Young Strelley is almost an impossible 
character; in hands less able than Hewlett's he 
would degenerate into pure burlesque. To every 
one else, the fair Aurelia, with her comico-tragic 
voice, is plainly no better than she should be, an 
intriguing little baggage, whom the worthy Doctor 
was quite right in discarding. But Francis Strel- 
ley, having once enshrined her as a saint, would be- 
lieve no ill of her. Through his fault, so he be- 
lieves, her husband had repudiated her. He must 
dedicate his life to the pious task of vindicating 
her and restoring her to her husband's arms. 
Starting on his self-appointed mission, he delib- 
erately severs himself from all communication 
with his family, and goes forth penniless, friend- 
less, nameless to wander through the disordered 
and warring states of eighteenth-century Italy. 

There follows a fascinating chronicle of a 
strange and bizarre Odyssey through hospitals and 
prisons and m.onasteries, alone and in company of 
thieves, mendicant priests and strolling players. 



82 MAURICE HEWLETT 

It has been said that The Fool Errant was an at- 
tempt to duplicate the success of The Forest 
Lovers in a setting of eighteenth-century Italy, 
just as it was subsequently said that the trilogy 
ending with Rest Harrow was an attempt to do the 
same thing once again in a setting of modern Eng- 
land. Be that as it may, the atmosphere of The 
Fool Errant is still sufficiently alien and romantic 
to permit of an idealistic treatment, and in spite 
of actual places and dates the central love story 
is imbued with a spirit of romance that is nowhere 
forced. It pictures the gradual awakening of a 
man who, after having mistakenly exalted an un- 
worthy woman, finds his model of constancy in an- 
other and very different type of girl whom he has 
rescued, out of sheer pity, from a degradation 
amounting to slavery. 

Brazenhead the Great, considered purposely out 
of its chronological order, is a volume which 
tempted a good many critics to exalt it above its 
strict deserts, out of sheer gratitude for Mr. Hew- 
lett's return to his own manner, after several years 
of literary vagrancy. As a matter of fact, it is 
not going to be remembered as one of its author's 
big achievements. There is in it a somewhat irri- 
tating note of extravagance, almost of burlesque. 
But on the other hand it is the old Hewlett back 
again, with all his rich embroidery of words and 
fantastic play of imagination. Captain Brazen- 



MAURICE HEWLETT 83 

head is not a new creation ; we had met him before 
in the New Canterbury Tales. But here we have 
no less than four of his adventures, each of them 
unique, each of them surcharged with concentrated 
vitaHty, and each of them conveying that special 
refinement of pleasure which we get from the reali- 
zation of an inimitable artistry. As for Brazen- 
head himself, " who was born greatly, lived greatly, 
loved greatly and died greatly," there is none quite 
like him in extant fiction. The product of a coarse 
age, whose business, as he himself laconically sums 
it up, is death, Captain Brazenhead is not over nice 
in his speech ; but to those who are not unduly sen- 
sitive to the crudities of Elizabethan English, there 
is a certain enjoyment to be derived from a mighty 
blast of words like the following : 

Who eats me chokes, for I am like that succulent 
that conceals^ d'ye see, his spines in youthful bloom. 
You think you have to do with a stripling: not you, 
pranking boy, not you. I am a seamed and notch- 
fingered soldier^ who belched Greek fire while you 
were in your swaddling-clout. I was old in iniquity 
ere they weaned you. Or do you vie with me in 
perils, by cock, do you so? Five times left for dead; 
trampled six times out by the rear-guard of the host 
I had led to victory; crucified, stoned, extenuated, 
cut into strips; in prisons frequent, in deaths not 
divided — what make you of it.^ And you to tell me 
that your green guts can pouch old Leather-tripes, 



84 MAURICE HEWLETT 

for so they dub me who dare? Foh, you are a blad- 
der^ I see! 



Yes, Brazenhead the Great rightly takes his 
place among the big swashbuckler heroes of ro- 
mantic fiction, and his death, like his life, refuses 
to be forgotten. In this final adventure, Mr. Hew- 
lett has done a remarkable piece of work, one that 
fits in perfectly with our sense of what is adequate, 
and yet at the same time utterly foreign to his 
usual methods. Brazenhead's death is allegory, 
pure and simple. He is a mighty warrior, Hercu- 
lean, invincible. To satisfy our sense of fitness he 
must meet a warrior's death, he must fall in a fair 
fight ; and yet on the other hand, we could not bear 
to have him meet a mightier foe than himself. Mr. 
Hewlett has hit upon a way of satisfying us in all 
these respects. He sets his unconquered, uncon- 
querable hero face to face with his own youth, with 
the man that he was fifty years earlier. The scene 
is a deep valley, the whole event is strange, por- 
tentous, titanic, a picture such as Dore might have 
drawn. And here Brazenhead falls, slain by his 
own youth, since " none but his own youth could 
have slain him, nor any slain his own youth but 
himself " — rwhich of course is only another way of 
stating the universal truth that it is our past life 
that is apt to prove our worst enemy. Brazenhead 
the Great, although not one of Mr. Hewlett's big- 



MAURICE HEWLETT 85 

gest efforts, contains certain scattered pages, 
single episodes that rank with the best that he has 
ever done or is ever likely to do. 

The reason why it seems worth while to discuss 
The Stooping Lady at some length is that it was 
in the nature of a transition work, Mr. Hewlett's 
first hesitant attempt in the direction of modernity. 
The flavor of a remote past was so much a part 
of the warp and woof of all that he had hitherto 
produced that the interesting question arose 
whether it was an inherent quality of his style, or 
simply a part of his carefully studied method of 
giving an historic atmosphere, just as you may 
give a spurious age to carved woodwork by the 
application of the right stain and varnish. At 
first sight, The Stooping Lady seemed to have ade- 
quately answered the question. There was nothing 
of the Tapestry Novel about the new volume, and 
yet, from the first page to the last, it was unmis- 
takably Hewlett. There was the same sureness of 
touch in word and phrase, the same wonderful 
power of making you see precisely what he saw in 
his mind's eye — only this time the pictures were as 
unmistakably early nineteenth century as in The 
Queen's Quair they were Elizabethan. And yet no 
competent judge of fiction could fail to recognize 
that, measured by Mr. Hewlett's earlier standard, 
The Stooping Lady fell considerably short of full 
achievement. Why this should be so is not immedi- 



86 MAURICE HEWLETT 

ately apparent. The opening years of the nine- 
teenth century, with its attendant unrest, its war- 
cry of reform, its violent clash of awakening de- 
mocracy, with the hereditary arrogance of caste, 
are inherently as full of interest as other epochs 
of English history already treated by Mr. Hewlett. 
And there is no lack of dramatic strength in the 
story of a stalwart young butcher who resents with 
his fists the murder of his favorite horse by a 
drunken lord ; who finds himself summarily clapped 
into jail for having thus dared to assert his 
rights ; and, through the injustice that he suffers, 
wins the notice, then the sympathy, then the love 
of the drunken lord's wayward, impetuous, brave- 
hearted niece, who is not herself conscious that she 
is stooping when she bestows her heart upon a man 
whose clean, fine manhood has taught her to respect 
and honor him. And yet, fine as the story is in 
conception and in workmanship, it somehow lacks 
bigness, finality and enduring interest. 

The fate of Mary Stuart will stir the hearts and 
fire the imagination for untold generations yet to 
come ; but the fate of a London butcher, even a self- 
educated butcher with a poetic soul and a gift for 
oratory, seems somehow to lack the magnitude that 
we expect to find in Mr. Hewlett's later work. 
Even the author himself appears to have felt at the 
last that there was no better ending for the story 
than an anti-climax. So when the Stooping Lady 



MAURICE HEWLETT 87 

has stooped even to the point of standing beside 
her lover while he endures his sentence to exposure 
in the pillory, and the turbulent mob gathers, and 
the riot act is read and the soldiers fire a volley 
into the crowd, the author shifts his responsibility 
over to a stray bullet that finds its way to the brain 
of the pilloried butcher and saves the undeniably 
charming lady of the title role from the necessity 
of stooping any longer. 

The real trouble, I am afraid, with The Stoop- 
ing Lady, is that in proportion as the author 
comes nearer to the present day, his magic slips 
away from him. In a brief novelette, called The 
Spanish Jade, the scene and date are Spain in the 
year of 1860 — -fully half a century later than The 
Stooping Lady, But territorial remoteness counts 
for something, and it is quite likely that, if he chose 
to lay his scene sufficiently far away, Mr. Hewlett 
could write a novel of the present hour that would 
stil have the mystic, intangible charm of The 
Forest Lovers. His Spanish Jade, as it happens, 
is a girl of the gutters, with a savage beauty, a 
wild-hearted, passionate, lawless nature. And a 
certain delicate, thin-lipped young Englishman, 
who saves her from a pack of human curs who are 
hounding her, is the first man from whom, in all 
her young life, she has received a real kindness. 
So, under the sway of love and gratitude, she stabs 
to death the Spaniard who would have killed them 



88 MAURICE HEWLETT 

both, and then offers her own life in atonement, to 
save her Englishman from the blood-vengeance of 
the dead man's kin. As a story, this little volume 
is not especially important. As a piece of tech- 
nique, Mr. Hewlett has wrought in it a very per- 
fect and surprising thing. He has told a story 
which, while you read, gives you the impression of 
great dimensions — a vast canvas, overspread with 
a vista of " a great, roomy, haggard country," a 
kaleidoscopic, shifting panorama of scenes and of 
people; a sense of gazing into measureless depths 
of human passions ; of having known and lived with 
the personages of the story, not merely through 
the brief space of a few printed pages, but through 
the intimacy of a lifetime. And yet, when the 
story is finished, and the cover closed, the human 
truths he has told are so simple and so clear that 
a single chapter might have embodied them. 

It remains only to comment quite briefly upon 
Open Country: A Comedy with a String ^ Halfway 
House: A Comedy of Degrees , and Rest Harrow: 
A Comedy of Resolution. The three volumes form 
a trilogy, but the trilogy was obviously an after- 
thought. As a matter of fact, the second volume, 
Halfway House, was issued first, and had scant 
connection with the other two. It dealt with a 
theme that would have been dear to the heart of 
Meredith — and nine reviewers out of ten noted the 
fact. It told of the belated passion of an elderly 



MAURICE HEWLETT 89 

country gentleman, John Germain, for a neighbor's 
governess, Mary Middleham, by name — a young 
woman of ample charms and numerous embryo love 
affairs. Now, it happens to come to the ears of the 
middle-aged suitor that one of her lovers is a family 
connection of his and one of his prospective heirs. 
The girl is honest, according to her lights ; on the 
wedding night, she makes certain girlish confes- 
sions, which leave the reader guessing as to the 
degree of their girlishness. At all events, they are 
sufficient to kill his elderly, half-spent passion, and 
their relations, during his brief remaining span of 
life, are strictly platonic. Now, there is a certain 
eccentric personage named Senhouse — John Sen- 
house — expert botanist, gipsy by choice, philoso- 
pher and outcast, whom the young wife in question 
runs across by accident, communes with, over a 
roadside fire, and accepts as her secret mentor. It 
is Senhouse who saves Mary from compromising 
rashness and convinces her that she really does not 
love her husband's cousin. It is he who enables her 
to return unashamed to her husband's death-bed, 
whisper to him a last confession and receive the 
mute forgiveness of his dying glance. But from 
his will she learns that the dead husband pre- 
judged her, that he has left her a certain income 
only for so long a time as she remains a widow, and 
that there is a codicil, bearing date just prior to 
her wedding, leaving the cousin a generous share, 



90 MAURICE HEWLETT 

provided he too remains unmarried. Of course, it 
is natural to assume that the widow and cousin 
brave poverty for the sake of love, and defy the 
selfish terms of the will. But the reader would be 
wrong, for the image of Senhouse, the gipsy phi- 
losopher, has come between them, and the widow, 
with her eyes wide open, elects to leave home and 
country, and follow his nomad destiny through the 
woodlands of Germany. And at this point Half- 
way House ends, and the reader assumes that they 
will marry and live happily ever after — and here 
again the reader is mistaken. 

Open Country^ published subsequently, but deal- 
ing with the earlier history of Senhouse, shows how 
idle it was to have assumed his marriage with the 
heroine of Halfway House. It shows us Senhouse 
as a social iconoclast, a man in revolt against the 
established customs of his times, a man who has no 
use for cities, wealth, the luxuries of civilization, 
and who has a topsy-turvy code of ethics, among 
which is his chief dictum that the crowning insult 
that any man can offer to a woman is a proposal of 
marriage. Now, the whole plot, both of Open 
Country and of Rest Harrow, is simply the effect 
of Senhouse's irregular doctrines upon a very 
charming young woman, named Sanchia Percival, 
whom he first meets when she is wading in a pool, in 
quest of water-lilies, and whose limbs, thus uncon- 
ventionally exposed to public gaze, the reader has 



MAURICE HEWLETT 91 

continually forced upon his attention, with the 
persistency of an obsession. Senhouse loves San- 
chia, but with an exalted and mystic passion that 
precludes, at first, any thought of earthly satisfac- 
tion. Sanchia meanwhile absorbs his unwholesome 
teachings with the enthusiasm of a votary ; and 
since she cannot have him, she proves her sincerity 
by going off with another man named Ingram, an 
ordinary, rather coarse-minded fellow, already en- 
cumbered with a wife. True to her principles, 
Sanchia continues to live openly with this man for 
upward of eight years — and it is somewhere mid- 
way in this period that Senhouse and Mary Ger- 
main try their unsuccessful experiment of life in 
common, also without the fetters of matrimony. 
Then comes the death of Ingram's wife, his offer to 
square accounts by marrying Sanchia, and reviving 
hopes on the part of her long scandalized family 
that at last she may be socially rehabilitated. But 
these hopes prove groundless. Almost on the eve 
of the tardy wedding, she slips quietly away in the 
night-time, to join Senhouse in his bare little shack 
among the goat pastures, for a honeymoon beneath 
the stars — a honeymoon that may or may not later 
receive the sanction of the Church. Such is the 
substance of these three volumes which, in spite of 
Mr. Hewlett's mature artistry, and some shrewd 
observance of modern types, remain unconvincing, 
exaggerated, at times almost grotesque. As an idyl 



92 MAURICE HEWLETT 

of romantic love, it is all as absurdly out of place 
as a knightly tourney in the midst of Piccadilly; 
while if we are to take the volumes seriously and to 
imagine that the preposterous doctrines preached 
by Senhouse in any way represent Mr. Hewlett's 
own views, it becomes necessary to regard them as 
distinctly unwholesome as well as inartistic. 

Accordingly, we have Mr. Hewlett standing 
openly to-day at the crossroads, trying to follow 
two paths at once, and sadly in danger of making 
no further advance. It would be futile to advise 
him to revert to his earlier method of Richard Yea- 
and-Nay, and The Queen's Quair; for, when an 
artist has once outgrown a certain mood, outlived a 
definite phase of his development, there can be no 
successful going back ; his heart would not be in 
the work, and it could not be sincere. Yet he ought 
to have given us more than those two volumes. His 
special equipment for the task was the patient 
labor of years ; his whole style was elaborated to 
that one end, and the peculiar archaic flavor of it 
is something that he can no longer lay aside at will, 
but must needs retain, in spite of its incongruity in 
a modern setting. It is as though a musician, with 
slim, flexible fingers, trained to an exquisite sensi- 
bility, skilled to caress the tremulous strings of a 
violin with hair's-breadth accuracy, should deliber- 
ately choose to waste their magic touch in ham- 
mering out socialistic tracts upon a typewriter. 



MAURICE HEWLETT 93 

There is good reason to fear that the best we may 
hope to have from him in the future is further in- 
stalments of extravagant, braggadocio satire of 
the Brazenhead type, and the worst, other volumes 
of the pseudo-Meredithian type of Rest Harrow. 
But this does not alter the fact that in the earlier 
Maurice Hewlett we have the chief living champion 
of purely romantic fiction, and a stylist of the first 
order, whose cadenced prose is a delight to the ear, 
whose verbal color has the gleam of many jewels, 
and who has given us at least two novels and many 
short stories which the epicures of literature will 
not willingly allow to die. 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

It is a simple matter and one requiring compara- 
tively little space, to set forth the qualities that en- 
title Mr. Eden Phillpotts to high consideration 
among contemporary English novelists. He has 
not the perplexing versatility of Mr. Kipling or 
Mr. Hewlett or Mr. Ollivant; having found his 
path, he is content for the most part to tread it 
faithfully, even though it lead him in a beaten cir- 
cle ; he is wise in preferring to do one kind of thing 
with finished art, rather than half a dozen things 
indifferently well. Like other writers, he passed 
through an experimental stage; he made the very 
common mistake of thinking that merit lay 
in the strange and startling and sinister — and 
when there was a dearth of the sensational 
at home, he sought it far afield, as in Loup- 
garou! Impressions of West Indian Life. But 
these early tentative writings have left less than 
the shadow of a memory on the public mind. Mr. 
Phillpotts is definitely labeled as the author of 
Children of the Mist, of The River and The Whirl- 
wind, the exponent of the life of Devonshire in 
much the same definite and exclusive way that 

94 




ED EX PHIELPOTTS 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 95 

Thomas Hardy is of Wessex and George W. Cable 
of New Orleans. It seems inevitable to write of 
Mr. Phillpotts without making mention of Hardy ; 
the points in common, especially in his earlier 
Devon stories, must strike even a novice at criti- 
cism. Even Mr. Howells, to whom Mr. Phillpotts 
came as a new discovery, a couple of years ago, 
found himself echoing this same stereotyped com- 
parison, and adding to it another that we all must 
feel — the George Eliot of St. Oggs and The Mill on 
the Floss. As the product of a younger genera- 
tion, Mr. Phillpotts has at least one important 
point of technique in his favor ; he is more imper- 
sonal. Hardy, splendid and unfaltering painter 
that he is of human nature, always leaves with me 
an impression that he has chosen his characters 
for the express purpose of proving some theory of 
life, some canon of his somber philosophy. Mr. 
Phillpotts shows us his little group of actors on 
their miniature stage, and then leaves the outcome 
to themselves and to destiny. And his great 
strength lies in the exceeding simplicity of his 
people, his themes, his entire artistic material. His 
men and women, the best of them, are primitive, al- 
most elemental; his situations all hinge upon the 
basic, primeval emotions, love and hate, envy and 
greed — and are worked out on lines of almost 
Greek austerity. In depicting life, the crude, un- 
tutored peasant life, he simply does not know how 



96 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

to be artificial. If anything, he errs too far the 
other side, and in depicting the speech and con- 
duct of his rustics there is often a Zolaesque 
frankness beyond the immediate exigencies of the 
picture he would paint. But his grip upon his 
types of character, men and women alike, is un- 
deniable. One feels that here is a weaver of pic- 
tured life who spins his thread direct from the raw 
material of human nature. And in doing so, he 
achieves some curious and striking results. The 
modern spirit, full of questionings and doubtings, 
has penetrated like a pestilence, if we are to ac- 
cept Mr. Phillpotts's evidence, among these " Chil- 
dren of the Mist," and played havoc with their 
peace of mind, leaving them at a sad disadvantage 
in their efforts to cope with the puzzling problems 
of ethics and morality. 

It is for such reasons as these that, if asked to 
name the most distinctive feature of the work of 
Mr. Phillpotts, I should say that he enjoys the ad- 
vantage of being unusually well rounded, that 
within a circumscribed area he sees life with pe- 
culiar clearness and sees it as a whole. His novels 
are in no sense religious novels, yet he never lets us 
forget that religion and scepticism are potent 
factors in our daily life ; they are not sex-problem 
novels, yet he keeps in mind the fact that man and 
woman are human animals as well as embodied 
spirits ; they are not political or socialist novels, 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 97 

yet the existence of class distinction and of hered- 
itary injustice between man and man is brought 
into the fabric of every page. In short, the little 
corner of Devon in which most of his dramas are 
enacted is a miniature cosmos, wherein nothing 
pertaining to human nature is alien to his purpose. 
This is his first distinction, his all-around and 
sympathetic understanding of humanity. And his 
second, hardly less in importance, is his artist's 
joy in the ever changing face of nature. As a 
landscape painter in words, he has no equal since 
the days of William Black. He is a master of the 
effects of light and shade, the glint of faint sun- 
shine through breaking clouds, the shifting forms 
of distant hills, seen vaguely through curtains of 
slanting rain, the shimmer of moonlight through 
thin leafage, the riot of color when nature bursts 
into blossom — all these things he gives us with a 
prodigality that would be excessive, if they were 
not their own justification — if he did not use them 
so triumphantly to interpret character, to explain 
the environment and the influences that have pro- 
duced certain human types. One is tempted to 
paraphrase a familiar definition, and to character- 
ize the novels of Mr. Phillpotts as " cross-sections 
of life, seen through an atmosphere." 

The first book that brought Mr. Phillpotts into 
general notice, both in England and America, was, 
curiously enough, not laid in the district destined 



98 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

later to be identified with him, but in the adjacent 
county of Cornwall — and incidentally proves him 
to be as skilled a painter of the marine landscape 
as he is of mountain and of moor. Lying Proph- 
ets, which appeared in 1897, is undoubtedly the 
corner-stone of Mr. Phillpotts's reputation. And 
yet the theme is as old as the origin of fiction itself. 
It is merely one more of the countless versions of a 
simple, untutored young woman whom nature has 
chosen to make beautiful, who longs for something 
better than her lot in life affords her, who lends a 
credulous ear to a handsome and cultured 
stranger, and pays the penalty which, under ex- 
isting conventions, woman must pay for breaking 
the unwritten law. Joan Tregenza belongs to a 
race of fanatics. Her father, known as Gray 
Michael, is a leading spirit in the sect known as 
the Luke Gospelers ; a sect which finds a perverse 
joy in believing all the rest of humanity and a 
goodly share of their own number to be predestined 
to damnation. Bigotry, self-righteousness, phar- 
isaical complacency have seldom been better por- 
trayed than in the character of Gray Michael. 
And yet one realizes that he is a pagan at heart; 
that if it were not for the restraints of the law he 
would gladly commit, in the name of God, atroci- 
ties worthy of those ancient Phoenician pioneers 
who are the legendary ancestors of Cornishmen. 
From the time when Gray Michael beat his 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 99 

daughter until she fell in a faint at his feet, for no 
more serious sin than attending an evening service 
at Saint Peter's, the girl lived in secret rebellion 
against her surroundings ; but no opportunity for 
self-assertion presented itself until the advent of 
John Barron, famous artist, invalid of numbered 
days and faithful exponent of finished egotism. 
Joan, it may be remarked in passing, is betrothed 
to a fisherman known as Joe ; and the sight of her 
standing on a promontory, in the midst of a yellow 
glory of gorse in blossom, waving good-by to a 
receding schooner, gives Barron the inspiration for 
which he has been waiting, the germ idea for his 
last great picture, " Joe's Ship." The substance 
of this book is the history of Joan's slow trans- 
formation under the tutelage of John Barron ; the 
insidious poison of his esthetic pantheism work- 
ing upon a spirit in revolt against the stifling 
narrowness of the religious creed in which it has 
been nurtured. Joan is a splendid portrayal of 
triumphant physical womanhood, instinct with the 
supreme joy of living; and she welcomes Bar- 
ron's glorification of the divine spirit of nature, 
the divinity lurking in every blossom and blade of 
grass, as a doctrine for which she has been uncon- 
sciously thirsting all her life. Week by week she 
visits him secretly; week by week the picture of 
" Joe's Ship," with Joan as its central figure, 
moves toward consummation — and with it her will 



100 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

yields to that of the artist. And, of course, the 
inevitable, which is also the irreparable, comes to 
pass. And John Barron, whose acknowledged rule 
of life is " to sacrifice all things to mood," passes 
out of Joan's life, with many a promise which he 
has no intention of keeping, leaving her to make 
pathetic daily pilgrimages to the post office at 
Penzance, seeking for letters that do not come, and 
hoping against hope for a marriage ring that will 
antedate the advent of her child. The ending of 
the book is weak ; Mr. Phillpotts was at this epoch 
still straining after the ususual and the startling, 
still liable to mistake the intervention of natural 
forces for a satisfactory solution of a purely 
human problem. John Barron, yielding to the 
last caprice of a dying man, writes to Joan telling 
of his condition and pitifully appealing to her to 
come to him. It is this letter which sends Joan 
blindly out into the night, in her enfeebled condi- 
tion, just at the hour when pent-up torrents are 
about to break their bounds in a devastating flood. 
Joe, her affianced husband, who throughout these 
months has been away, comes into the story at the 
eleventh hour, to find his promised bride a corpse, 
with a lasting stain upon her memory, and rushes 
off in hot haste to London, to exact vengeance. 
But here again he comes just too late, for Fate 
has already intervened and Barron also is dead. 
In two respects this ending is bad art ; first, in the 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 101 

intrusion of blind chance as a solution of the prob- 
lem ; and secondly, in the introduction, at the clos- 
ing scene, of a character that has previously had 
no speaking part in the drama. Yet, just as it 
stands, this book possesses a certain finished work- 
manship and a truthfulness to life that eminently 
justify the praise bestowed by the Athenceum, 
that " nothing so powerful in this line has ap- 
peared since Esther Waters.'^ 

The Children of the Mist, the first of the really 
significant Devon stories, is in itself a sufficient 
corner-stone on which to build a solid reputation. 
I question whether, among his subsequent volumes, 
Mr. Phillpotts has produced any that is at once 
so simple in material, so human, so unmistakably a 
transcript from the life he knew and studied at 
first hand. It is not so well constructed as his 
later books ; the plot is loose, diffuse, with too 
many side interests ; the leading characters are 
disappointingly small at critical moments, and the 
final solution, as in Lying Prophets, turns on a 
whim of fate. Yet the net impression left by the 
book is of something rare and fine and true ; some- 
thing more spacious and more inspiring than a 
mere chronicle of a few narrow human lives — it is 
all Devon that he has given us, flung broadly be- 
fore us in " a radiance of misty silver." It is the 
physiognomy of a landscape, the psychology of a 
community that he has tried to interpret in 



102 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

Children of the Mist; and in a canvas so ample, 
the individual is necessarily dwarfed. If the two 
brothers, Martin and John Grimbal, had not re- 
turned from Africa, after many years' absence, 
bringing with them substantial riches, Will Blan- 
chard's courtship of Miller Lyddon's daughter, 
Phoebe, would have been met with less violent op- 
position, and Will's sister, Chris, might have found 
less tragedy in her love for Clem Hicks, expert 
bee-keeper and rustic poet. Will Blanchard's be- 
setting sin is his violent temper, that leads him 
into reckless deeds the consequences of which he 
does not stop to weigh. When Miller Lyddon, im- 
movable in his stolid obstinacy, refuses to listen to 
Will's suit, and vows that his daughter shall wed 
John Grimbal, Will hot-headedly leaves home and 
under an assumed name enlists in the army, lured 
by fantastic visions of prosperity and fame, and 
tells his secret to no one but his friend, Clem 
Hicks. Months drift by, and slowly Phoebe's op- 
position to Grimbal is overborne, her confidence in 
Will is shaken, and she consents to marry as her 
father wishes. Then follows an urgent message 
from Clem, and Will commits his second rash act 
by deserting and returning on the eve of Phoebe's 
wedding day, bearing her off in triumph and 
marrying her through the aid of an uncle in a dis- 
tant village. The greater part of the story that 
follows, so far as there is any clear-cut story, 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 103 

concerns the slow and at first almost hopeless 
efforts of the young couple to win forgiveness 
from the dogged, stubborn old father, his reluc- 
tant decision not to have Will prosecuted for ab- 
duction and, after two years of weary waiting, his 
inability to keep the husband and wife any longer 
apart. It is a slow, leisurely chronicle, witnessed 
through the shifting seasons of sun and rain ; a 
peaceful chronicle, too, except for the stormy un- 
dercurrent of hatred between Blanchard and the 
man whom he robbed of a wife. John Grimbal 
guesses vaguely that there is some secret con- 
nected with Will's mysterious absence from home, 
which, if known to him, would give him a chance 
for vengeance. And after years of patient wait- 
ing he discovers the secret through pure accident. 
Once before, it was almost in his grasp. Clem 
Hicks, the only person whom Will had ever told, 
has quarreled with him bitterly, is about to square 
a grudge and betray him to Grimbal, when a false 
step off the lofty edge of Oke Tor lands him on the 
rocks far below, with a broken neck. And, if fate 
must intervene to save him from betraying the 
brother, it would have been kinder had it acted 
soon enough to spare the sister too ; for by his un- 
timely death, Clem leaves the woman he loves to 
face the world, not as a wife, yet as the mother of 
his child. But this second tragedy is subordinated 
by the author to the main issue of what use John 



104 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

Grimbal will make of his knowledge that his enemy, 
now for ten years the husband of the woman he 
coveted, is a deserter and liable to arrest and 
punishment. The scene between the two, in which 
each arises to unexpected heights, the one in mag- 
nanimity, the other in a newly awakened desire to 
expiate his crime, is a striking instance of the 
author's ability to take a situation tensely dra- 
matic in itself, and wring new and unexpected 
poignancy from it by making awakened conscience 
sweep conditions aside, as one might sweep the 
pawns from a chessboard. It is something more 
than a pity that, when Grimbal has decided to 
spare Will, and Will, refusing to be spared, has 
gone to deliver himself up, the credit should be 
taken from both of them by the accidental mailing 
of a letter that Grimbal meant to destroy, and 
that reaches the Commandant at Plymouth ahead 
of Blanchard; and secondly, after he had sur- 
rendered, prepared to take the punishment that 
awaited him, it is again a pity that his liberation 
and return to his wife and newly born heir should 
be due to the fact that, on the occasion of her 
Jubilee, the Queen has chosen to pardon all de- 
serters. It is sheer coincidence and a blot on a 
story otherwise admirable in workmanship. 

Sons of the Morning will not need much atten- 
tion. Although the setting is essentially the same 
as in Children of the Mist, the substance of the 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 105 

story shows a falling back to the author's earlier 
melodramatic tendency. The opening situation is 
not unsimilar to that of the previous book. Honor 
Endicott might have married Christopher Yeo- 
land, whose estates border on her own, and been 
very happy with him, in spite of his volatile 
character, his inability to settle down to useful 
work, if Myles Stapleton, older, graver, of more 
sterling worth, had not chanced to come back from 
his travels at a crucial hour. But here the two 
stories part company. Unconsciously, Honor 
finds herself drifting into a closer friendship with 
Myles than is right for the promised bride of an- 
other man; before she is quite aware how it hap- 
pened, she is in love with two men at once, and 
cannot tell even herself which of the two means 
the more to her. Christopher, had he been less 
impulsive, might have triumphed ; but instead, he 
quarrels with Honor, departs tempestuously for 
Australia, and a few months later the news comes 
that he has been bitten by a snake and is dead. 
Now that her doubt is solved for her. Honor mar- 
ries Myles, and settles down contentedly to a life 
which, if lacking the keen joy of living that 
Christopher's ardor once promised, at least offers 
years of untroubled domesticity. But it happens 
that Christopher is not dead, that the man bitten 
by a snake is a distant cousin, and that in one of 
his rash impulses he has quixotically allowed the 



106 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

false report to go uncorrected, in order to insure, 
as he thinks, the happiness of the woman whom he 
loves and who has learned to love another man. 
Having done this deed, Christopher should have 
abided by it ; no man has the right to play Enoch 
Arden one day and resurrect himself the next. Yet 
that is precisely what Christopher, the sport of his 
own transient whims, sees fit to do; and his secret 
return to his home, and the sight of him, suddenly 
and without warning, in the gloom of woods at 
night, costs the life of Stapleton's unborn heir, and 
very nearly costs the life of the mother. The plot 
fails to carry conviction, and drags on quite 
unnecessarily. The idea of three people making 
themselves wretched because the wife will not de- 
cide between them, the husband is reluctant to as- 
sert himself, and the other man is too selfish to do 
the honorable thing, is all so preposterous as to be 
almost grotesque. And then, finally, when hus- 
band and wife have their crucial talk together, 
and she awakens to a sense of her own unfairness 
and declares unequivocally her preference for him 
and her wish to be taken away where she will never 
again hear the sound of Christopher's voice, an- 
other trick of fate intrudes itself, the happy hus- 
band falls headlong from Teign's Head, and the 
widow, although she eventually marries the other 
man, goes through life with the secret and re- 
morseful fear that she had failed to convince Myles 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 107 

of her love for him and that his death was not an 
accident. 

It is, of course, impossible, in the case of a 
writer so uniformly industrious, to attempt to dis- 
cuss in detail even a majority of his volumes ; and 
some of them, as, for instance, The Good Red 
Earth, do not deserve it. It has the customary 
flavor of the soil, but in essence it is a mystery 
story, turning upon the discovery of some hidden 
documents, and the identity of a child, supposed 
to be a caretaker's daughter. A book of very 
different caliber, one of the books, in fact, that 
really count, is The River. Here again, as in Chil- 
dren of the Mist, Mr. Phillpotts's dominant pur- 
pose has been to show the mighty and far-reaching 
influence of environment on character. If it were 
not for the River, the Dart, he seems to say, none 
of these lives would have been lived as here set 
down. It is an ever present influence, moulding 
characters, shaping destinies, emphasizing at once 
the ceaseless changefulness of nature and the 
mutability of man. In this volume, more than 
anywhere else, we get a glimpse of Eden Phill- 
potts's kinship with Joseph Conrad, in his ability 
to measure man alongside of the titanic forces of 
nature. Take for instance this bit of description 
of the Dart at flood-time: 

From the granite centers of the hills, headlong 
down the rocky places, boiling, shrieking over steeps 



108 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

and shallows like a Fury with lightning in her hair, 
she (the Dart) came. From the playground of the 
wind, from the hidden secrets of her springs, swollen 
to a torrent, swelled to ungovernable cataracts, she 
poured herself between the heights; and the noise of 
her passing was mingled with the thunder, with the 
reverberations and concussions of the air and repeti- 
tions of the earth. Her hoarse ravings ascended to 
the sky, and, borne by echoing ravines and crags, 
fell upon the frightened ear ; her maniac shout knelled 
death and disaster, and set the husbandmen shaking 
for their beasts. Into the valley she rolled, and 
rioted even as high as the branches of the trees that 
shadowed her ; her locks of foam were tawny and her 
current black. 

As for the story, it is merely the oft-told theme 
of the way of a maid with two men. Hannah 
Braidridge, " tall, full-blooded, with sleepy eyes 
and strong, budding passions," is the heroine. 
She finds herself wavering between Nicholas Edge- 
combe, a warrener, clean of limb and of thought, 
who dwells " among immortal things," and Tim- 
othy Oldrew, a gentleman farmer, essentially bad 
at heart, who nevertheless exhibits from time to 
time a momentary flash of elemental decency. 
Hannah's faithlessness, and her shifting back and 
forth between the farmer and the warrener, form 
the mainspring of the human narrative, which is 
necessarily somewhat subordinated to the central 
theme of the River itself. It is the Dart which is 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 109 

the real heroine, the Dart that is full-blooded, with 
strong, budding passions, the Dart whose change- 
ful moods no human heroine could rival. 

It is not necessary to waste time or space upon 
a volume such as The Golden Fetish, narrating the 
quest of a great treasure of precious stones, hid- 
den in the land of the Batoncas, in Central Africa. 
It may be defined as a fairly adequate attempt to 
perform an unfamiliar, if not uncongenial task. 
But, in view of the fact that Mr. Phillpotts is 
capable of better and higher things, it seems a pity 
that he could not be content to leave riotous 
romance of this particular brand in the eminently 
capable hands of Mr. Rider Haggard. It is a relief 
to turn to a subsequent volume that finds Mr. 
Phillpotts once more back in the familiar setting 
of the tors and woodlands of Dartmoor, and once 
more interpreting the strong, rugged elemental 
men and women who inhabit it. The Secret 
Woman stands high among the best works its 
author has given us ; and, what is more, he has 
gained in unity of theme, as is shown by the com- 
paratively few words needed to expound it. It 
deals with a tragedy as old as human nature itself. 
Anthony, Redvers is in his heart a rebel against the 
laws of marriage, social and divine. According to 
his secret creed, " 'Tis only a wicked saying of the 
parson's that a man can't love two women true an' 
tender. Love's an honest thing, an' them as have 



110 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

made it to be a wicked thing are black-coated devils 
that would starve the nature out of human life, 
if they could." He sees no lack of loyalty toward 
the faithful, austere, prematurely aging wife, 
after fifteen wedded years, in giving a share of his 
own turbulent and lawless affections to the young 
woman whom fate has flung secretly into his arms. 
The only shame and wrong would be to let the 
knowledge come to his wife and distress her. One 
day, however, the secret is betrayed, and the wife, 
in a jealous frenzy, strikes her husband dead. It 
chances that both the erring women, the murderess 
and her rival, escape detection; and the book 
becomes the history of two long and silent 
martyrdoms — that of the wife, longing to confess 
her guilt, and that of the other, who dare not 
openly mourn her dead. Mr. Phillpotts has writ- 
ten nothing since The Children of the Mist that 
compares with this volume in strength of theme 
and careful character drawing. 

The Portreeve^ which comes next in order of 
sequence, is, in spite of its obvious merits, not to 
be rashly pronounced an advance upon its author's 
previous works. It lacks the grim intensity of 
The Secret Woman, the lyric enthusiasm of Chil- 
dren of the Mist; but on the other hand, it has a 
more even strength, a greater dignity that comes 
from reserve force. Yet, it is like his previous 
books in being made from material surprisingly 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 111 

simple and primitive. It tells the story of a young 
couple estranged on the eve of their marriage, 
because another man, socially beneath her, wants 
the girl, and another woman, socially above him, 
wants the man. Dodd Wolverstan has worked his 
way slowly up, from the workhouse to a modest 
competence. At thirty he is an independent 
farmer, holds the local and ancient honorary office 
of Portreeve, and has just won the promise of Ilet 
Yelland to marry him. But Primrose Horn, only 
daughter of the prosperous master of Bowden 
Farm, accustomed always to have what she wants, 
has long since determined that she wants the Port- 
reeve, and when she learns that Abel Pierce, un- 
couth and unprincipled, will stop at nothing if 
he may win Ilet away from Wolverstan, she enters 
into a shameless plot with Abel to rake up an old 
and discredited scandal and put new life into it 
with a few ingenious lies. The plot works with an 
ease that would fail to carry conviction, if Mr. 
Phillpotts did not show, with his accustomed lucid- 
ity, how tradition, religious bigotry and the easy 
credulity of primitive minds all worked together 
to separate and estrange the young couple. The 
plot, however, succeeds only in part, and from 
Primrose Horn's point of view, the less important 
part. Convinced that her lover has driven another 
young woman through shame to suicide, Ilet tries 
to forget her chagrin, through a hasty marriage 



112 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

with Abel. Wolverstan is made of sterner stuff. 
Although Ilet seems hopelessly lost to him, years 
pass before he can even bear the thought of marry- 
ing another woman, even a woman so desirable as 
Primrose Horn, now in the full ripeness of her 
beauty. But at last a day comes when the pro- 
posal she has so long awaited is trembling on his 
tongue, his arms are around her, his kisses on her 
lips, when a messenger arrives in hot haste with 
the news that Ilet's husband, Abel, has been 
crushed in the stone quarries, and has a confession 
to make before he dies — a confession that will be- 
tray Primrose's unsuspected treachery. The half- 
spoken proposal is destined never to be finished, 
because when next he meets Primrose, Wolverstan 
and Ilet are once more betrothed, and when a year 
has passed, they are married. Primrose Horn is 
the type of woman whose love when scorned turns 
to hate ; and the second and stronger half of The 
Portreeve deals with her slow, deliberate method 
of revenge. Inexorable as fate, she robs him, one 
by one, of his farm, his cattle, his local prestige, 
his wife's health, his child's life, his ambition, hope 
and faith ; until at last fate takes the guidance out 
of her criminal hands and her revenge recoils, with 
unexpected grimness, on her own head. 

The Whirlrmnd, I am aware, has been rated 
very high by some critics. Mr. Howells, for in- 
stance, singles it out as his personal favorite 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 113 

choice, among all of Mr. Pliillpotts's writings, and 
does not hesitate to add the high praise that " it 
has all the mystic quality of Anna Karenina's 
dream, in which her husband and her lover are 
reconciled in their common possession." Never- 
theless, I fail to see by what right The Whirlwind 
could be numbered among his strongest books. It 
is certainly not on a level with The Children of the 
Mist or The Secret Woman. There is less spon- 
taneity in the character drawing ; his men and his 
women lack something of the vital individuality of 
the earlier volumes ; they suggest something stereo- 
typed and worked over from earlier impressions. 
The central plot is not merely repellent, but diffi- 
cult of acceptance. Many personages have speak- 
ing parts in the drama, but only three are inti- 
mately concerned : The Master, the Man and the 
Man's Wife. They are rather closer to the soil, 
more frankly, elementally peasant types than even 
Mr. Phillpotts usually gives us. In Daniel Brendon 
we have a splendid specimen of physical manhood, 
a young giant exulting in his strength, a true son 
of the " good red earth," slow of speech and of 
thought ; and in Sarah Jane Friend, whom he mar- 
ries, he finds a mate physically worthy of him, in 
spite of the fact that her father is caretaker of an 
abandoned peat works and that his vocation has 
eaten into his spirit until he lives and talks wholly 
in peat. Intellectually, Sarah Jane is superior. 



114 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

both to her father and to her husband. She has a 
restless, inquiring turn of mind; she has her pri- 
vate doubts about many things, about rehgion, 
about social conventions, about the established 
order of things. Nevertheless, she is happy in her 
love for her husband, her daily round of duties; 
she will never deliberately accomplish her own un- 
happiness. But it happens that the Master, 
Woodrow by name, neurotic, selfish, doomed to a 
short life and aware of it, is attracted by her 
splendid womanhood and determines to take her 
for himself. His is the old, threadbare argument 
of lago, that " He who is robbed, not wanting 
what is stolen, let him not know it, and he is not 
robbed at all." He sets forth the terms of the 
bargain to her in all its unashamed nakedness. 
If she consents, then all the great estate, all the 
splendid piece of moorland where her husband now 
toils as little higher than a serf, will become his 
own, as soon as the brief span of its present 
owner's life has run its course. And the woman, 
for the sake of her husband's material gain, con- 
sents — that is, if we can bring ourselves to accept 
Mr. Phillpotts's statement, a thing which is diffi- 
cult to do. He should have wrought his woman of 
a coarser clay, a clay more closely akin to that of 
her own father, if he wanted us to believe that she 
would suffer herself to be put to so base a service. 
It has pleased some critics, among others, Mr. 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 115 

Howells, as the above quotation implied, to read 
into this story a rather subtle explanation, and 
find excuse for the woman on the ground that she 
was caught in the vortex of a double passion, per- 
plexed and tormented by having fallen, almost un- 
consciously, in love with two men at once. This 
theory is ingenious, but over-subtle. Mr. Phill- 
potts usually is quite capable of stating unequivo- 
cally what he means. In Sons of the Morning he 
leaves no doubt whatever that his heroine is a 
victim of precisely this dilemma, of loving two 
men at once; but Honor Endicott is a wealthy 
landowner, not a peasant; she is, moreover, a 
highstrung, introspective young person, all nerves 
and temperament, and separated by an im- 
measurable distance from the physical opulence 
of the Sarah Jane type. In his written words, Mr. 
Phillpotts implied, in The Whirlwind, nothing 
more than a physical bargain and sale — and he 
can usually be trusted to know his peasants. 

It is a temptation to linger unduly over each 
separate volume ; there are several which challenge 
attention and the relative merit of which is fairly 
open to dispute. There is, for instance. The 
Mother of the Man, proclaimed, not without 
reason, as a masterpiece of tragic motherhood, the 
anguish of a woman torn between mother love and 
an overpowering sense of duty. The Three Brothers 
is still another volume which has eager champions 



116 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

among the special followers of Mr. Phillpotts ; and 
undoubtedly they have a right to their preference 
among volumes where the quality is, year after 
year, so surprisingly well sustained. But, in a 
study like the present, where it is impossible to be 
exhaustive, the volumes to be dwelt upon are not 
those built upon the established formula, and so 
well built as to make choice difficult, but rather 
those — if there are any such — which show a touch 
of novelty, a freshness of thought or of theme. 
Precisely this new note is afforded by The Beacon, 
and for that reason it deserves a rather careful 
analysis. Although it still deals with Dartmoor 
folk, and is full of the quaint humor, crude philoso- 
phy and odd character drawing that he has taught 
his readers to expect in almost too generous pro- 
portions, its central theme strikes an unwontedly 
modern note. While not a suffragette novel, it 
deals with the modern, independent woman, the 
woman who believes that she has a wider mission 
than to perform the duties of wife and mother, 
that she should strive to be an inspiration to her 
husband and raise him to a higher standard, a 
broader and nobler outlook upon life. Having 
propounded his theme, Mr. Phillpotts does not 
hesitate to make quite clear his own utter disbelief 
in the modern attitude; and he proceeds to set 
forth, in intimate detail, two modern marriages 
that begin bright with promise and are wrecked 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 117 

simply because the wives insist upon trying to re- 
model their husbands to suit their own ideas. 
With one of these marriages, that of the village 
innkeeper, it is not necessary to concern ourselves 
here. However well done, it is none the less of 
subordinate interest, part of the background and 
stage setting of the other marriage, the real cen- 
tral theme of the volume. Lizzie Denster is a 
London barmaid who, tiring of city life, secures a 
position at the principal tavern in a small Dart- 
moor village, and promptly wins the hearts of the 
two most desirable suitors in the neighborhood. 
Charles Trevail is nephew of old Abraham Trevail, 
owner of extensive quarries, an old miser, hot of 
temper and foul of tongue, and above all a woman- 
hater. Reynols Dunning, young Trevail's rival, 
and some years his senior, is a man lacking in all 
the outward refinements of dress and speech, the 
little courtesies and attentions that appeal to 
women ; but he is a man to be depended on, a 
rugged, big-souled man whose joy in life would be 
to guard and fight for the woman he loved. Inci- 
dentally, he and old Abraham Trevail have had a 
lifelong feud, and the latter has been heard to vow 
that sooner or later he will kill his enemy. Be- 
tween her two suitors Lizzie wavers. She knows 
that she can control Trevail ; he is weak, and his 
obvious need of some one on whom to lean, some 
one to uplift him, appeals to her. Dunning, on 



118 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

the other hand, she fears, because he is masterful ; 
as his wife she never would be able to dominate 
him. She does not realize, Mr. Phillpotts tells us 
parenthetically, that of the two tasks, it is far 
harder to arouse a weak man than to soften and 
subdue a masterful one. And because she does not 
understand this, she makes her first big mistake and 
marries young Trevail. Her second and more seri- 
ous error lies in trying to goad her husband into 
assuming a courage that he does not possess. Uncle 
Abraham and she quarrel violently, and a day 
comes when, in the heat of passion, he strikes her. 
From this moment, her fixed purpose in life is to 
bring about a breach that cannot be healed, to 
force her husband to make clear to his uncle that 
he rejects his aid during life and his money after 
he is dead. And because she fails to gain her 
point, because she is slowly forced to the convic- 
tion that Charles has again failed her, that he is 
constitutionally too great a coward ever to brave 
his uncle, she leaves him at last and goes to the 
house of Dunning, the masterful man, ready to re- 
main with him if he will have her. Then follows 
swift tragedy. Footsteps are heard approaching. 
Lizzie, believing that her husband has tracked her 
to Dunning's home, takes refuge in an upper room 
and listens in dumb anguish to the faint sound of 
voices below. Then follow other sounds, then 
silence. When, after long suspense, she ventures 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 119 

to creep down, she finds Dunning alone, stretched 
upon the floor, with his head crushed in by a blow 
dealt from behind. The rest of the volume deals 
with the mystery of this murder, the way in which 
suspicion fastens upon Charles, and the fixed con- 
viction of Lizzie that the real murderer is Uncle 
Abraham, and that if she persists she will at last 
force his stubborn nature to the point of con- 
fession. Eventually, the woman attains her ob- 
ject, and saves her husband; but what Mr. Phill- 
potts makes clear beyond all question is that, even 
after she has done all this, the two cannot come 
together again — that the union of the masterful 
woman and the weak husband is fundamentally 
wrong, and no amount of patching up will remedy 
it. 

Here, with this book, which two years ago 
sounded a new note of promise, it is well to take 
leave of Mr. Phillpotts. The subsequent volumes, 
while they might afford congenial material for a 
paragraph or more of comment that would be 
neither eulogy nor reproach, neither add nor sub- 
tract anything of importance from an estimate of 
him as a whole. Mr. Phillpotts is not, to-day, a 
vital force in the new fiction. He is a curious 
blending of British tradition and of the realistic 
movement of quarter of a century ago. His faults 
are the faults of a big and lasting tradition — the 
faults for which modern apologists are ever revert- 



120 EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

ing to Fielding and Smollett and Scott, to Dick- 
ens and Thackeray, for precedent and justifica- 
tion. In construction lies his great weakness ; his 
cardinal sins are a rambling looseness, an exas- 
perating tendency to digress and allow subordinate 
characters to usurp the center of the stage at their 
own sweet will; and, least pardonable of all, to 
shirk his task, not once but over and over again, 
and dodge the solution of some problem concerning 
an immortal soul, by letting a foot stumble or a 
finger slip, and precipitating a human carcass 
down a sheer five hundred feet on to Dartmoor 
granite. On the other hand, Mr. Phillpotts has a 
few qualities that are admittedly rare in the school 
of younger writers, any one of whom could give 
him valuable points on the art of construction. He 
has an amazing keenness of vision; nothing in 
physical life, not the quiver of a leaf nor the glint 
of a ray of light escapes him. And he has some- 
thing more important than this ; he has, developed 
to a rare extent, that invaluable quality — I was 
almost on the point of calling it the hall-mark — 
of a good realist, namely, the gift of being abso- 
lutely objective. And in this connection it is in- 
teresting to quote briefly from a letter written by 
Mr. Phillpotts himself and published not so very 
long ago in the Bookman : 

Serious modern novelists are engaged upon this 
high business and have no time to think about them- 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 121 

selves, or air their predilections, hobbies or opinions. 
The men who paraded themselves, consciously and 
unconsciously, were actuated by the old values, held 
in check by religion, morality and a thousand 
other conventional restrictions; but we feel that all 
these things are only so many bars and hindrances 
to that pure, scientific curiosity whose goal is the 
stark truth of human nature. An absolutely imper- 
sonal attitude is what we seek. A good surgeon in 
the midst of a life or death operation has no time 
to demonstrate or advertise. And we, who try to 
make live men and women — for novel writing is a 
life or death operation too — are similarly far too 
concerned with the enormous difficulties to intrude our 
own personalities or play showman. 

It is this absolutely impersonal attitude which 
constitutes Mr. Phillpotts's chief claim to recog- 
nition in contemporary fiction. In certain other 
respects, he is out of the current movement. Eng- 
lish and American fiction both owe a debt to the 
best of the French realists somewhat beyond Mr. 
Phillpotts's personal debt to them, and the result 
is that the net impression left by his works is that 
of a relatively greater diffuseness, a lack of the 
ruthless pruning of the Continental school, the in- 
sistence on perfect form. None the less, Mr. Phill- 
potts takes a high rank for his deep interest and 
profound understanding of human nature and his 
reverence for absolute truth to life. 



RUDYARD KIPLING 

This is not an auspicious time for adding to the 
already over-abundant accumulation of critical 
studies of Rudjard Kipling. On the one hand, it 
is still too early to sum him up with an assured 
finality; and on the other, although we may still 
hope that he has many a surprise yet in store, 
many a unique product of his mature powers, the 
fact remains that the day when one was compelled 
to write of him exuberantly, in the sheer joy of 
speculating on what his erratic and undisciplined 
genius would do next, is a thing of the past. Con- 
sequently, a chapter on Mr. Kipling at this time 
and place has just one excuse; that he is too im- 
posing a figure among contemporary English 
story tellers to be omitted ; his inclusion will be 
taken for granted. Yet, beyond some minor re- 
adjustments, beyond attempting to point out a 
safe mid-channel between the relative claims of the 
earlier and the later Kipling, there is really very 
little that is new to say about an author who has 
intrenched himself in the hearts of the Anglo- 
Saxon world more widely and more solidly than 
any other writer since Dickens — who, more than 
122 




RUDYARD KIPLING 



RUDYARD KIPLING ,123 

an}^ other, has enriched the language of the people 
with words and phrases that have become part of 
our verbal medium of exchange, the legal tender 
of our current speech. 

A great deal has been idly written about the 
" Decline of Kipling," about " Kipling at the 
Crossroads," about the contrast between the old 
Kipling and the new. The plain truth is that, ex- 
cepting for a widened horizon, an awakened under- 
standing, the author of Traffics and Discoveries 
and of Rewards and Fairies is the same old Kip- 
ling of Soldiers Three and Barrack-Room Ballads, 
and that he is so because he has always been the 
new Kipling, always doing the strange and unex- 
pected, always refusing to be definitely labeled as 
the story teller of India, the self-appointed lau- 
reate of Tommy Atkins, the Anglo-Saxon Aesop. 
There are some geniuses too big to run smoothly in 
a beaten track. That Mr. Kipling has grown and 
broadened with the passage of years needs no ar- 
gument. To take the measure of that growth, 
one has only to compare any one of the Depart- 
mental Ditties with such a poem as " The Truce of 
the Bear," or " The White Man's Burden." 

It follows, quite naturally, that critics of the 
academic sort feel driven to explain the source of 
Mr. Kipling's wide appeal, to analyze his works 
and prove by the careful logic of a proposition 
from Euclid, wherein his greatness lies. They try 



124i RUDYARD KIPLING 

to show that in his earliest as well as in his latest 
writings we already have a man of fully developed 
purpose, self-appointed spokesman of the Anglo- 
Saxon race, champion of Imperialism, discipline, 
law and order. Now, it is quite true that you can 
go back as far as you please in Mr. Kipling's 
writings, back even to those fugitive and inconse- 
quential pieces collected in Abaft the Funnel, and 
find in them many a germ idea which was destined 
later to bear big fruit. But this you can do with 
almost any man of Kipling's mental stature. To 
take a single example, Zola's Lettres de Jeunesse 
show in embryo almost every one of the ideas that 
later became with him articles of faith, corner- 
stones of his biggest achievements. But to claim 
that Zola, as a raw collegian, had already fully 
mapped out his Quatre Evangiles or that the 
author of The Rescue of Pluffies had already for- 
mulated his philosophy of life, is to utter nonsense. 
Among the products of Mr. Kipling's mature 
powers is a story which has with justice been much 
admired, The Ship That Found Herself, It nar- 
rates, you will remember, the first trans-Atlantic 
voyage of the new ship Dimbula, and tells how from 
the weighing of the anchor and the first turn of 
the screw there began a clamor, an insistent babel 
of voices, a discord of each and every part of the 
ship, airing their grievances, blaming their neigh- 
bors, the rivets complaining to the plates, the 



RUDYARD KIPLING 125 

shaft denouncing the propeller, one and all con- 
sumed by an over-weening egotism. And then, fin- 
ally, one day a new, deep voice booms out calmly 
but commandingly, " What is all this noise 
about? " And when the thousand plates and rivets, 
planks and beams wonderingly chorus the question, 
" Who are you? " the answer comes, " Why, I am 
the ship Dimhula, of course, and I have never been 
anything else, only I didn't quite know it — that, 
and a good deal of a fool." Now, this story is 
usually interpreted, and justly, as an inimitable 
allegory of the awakening of civic consciousness in 
a community, the realization of organized 
strength. Yet it is equally legitimate to apply it 
to an individual instead of a mob — even to apply 
it to Mr. Kipling himself. From the beginning, 
certain of his pet hobbies and aversions had been 
insistently crying out in everything that he wrote, 
vociferously clamoring to be heard, drowning each 
other, working at cross purposes, not yet con- 
scious that, taken together, they made up a rather 
remarkable personality. And then, all of a sud- 
den, Mr. Kipling seems one day to have awakened, 
stretched himself and announced in calm surprise, 
" Why, I am Rudyard Kipling, of course, and I 
never have been anything else^ — only I was not 
precisely aware of it." 

This way of looking at Mr. Kipling was forced 
upon me recently as the result of having tried the 



126 RUDYARD KIPLING 

experiment of rereading in wholesale quantities 
all of his earlier volumes, Under the Deodars, 
Mine Own People, The Phantom Ricksham — re- 
newing acquaintance with a large majority of these 
stories after an interval of nearly a score of years. 
The old glamour was still there, yet what im- 
pressed me chiefly in thus going back to them was 
a lack of unity, an absence of any common purpose, 
a suggestion of experiments in a hundred different 
directions, as of a man groping for his path. The 
truth is that Mr. Kipling was cursed with a pre- 
cocious talent, a marvelous facility which would 
have been disastrous to a writer of smaller caliber. 
Fate had played into his hands by giving him an 
exotic setting of unrivaled brilliance, an oppor- 
tunity for pyrotechnic bursts of verbal color, 
through which we glimpse strange dramas and the 
clash of alien races. He had, however, the natural 
instinct of the story teller. He grew up in a land 
where this instinct is bred in the bone, and where 
many of the oldest tales of the world, which have 
since migrated to every civilized country, were 
first slowly wrought into shape, gathering perfec- 
tion as they were passed down by word of mouth 
through uncounted generations. How much of 
this native gift of story-telling Mr. Kipling may 
have unconsciously assimilated in boyhood it would 
be interesting to know; at least, there is much of 
the same laborious process of endless polishing 



RUDYARD KIPLING 127 

shown in the Jtmgle Books and the Just-So Stories, 
But in his early years he did not always take time 
to shape his stories; they impress one, many of 
them, as having largely written themselves. He 
was often content to tell his stories in the first 
person, not coming in directly as a participator, 
but merely as a witness, recording certain events 
glimpsed in passing, things which happened, in a 
certain way, not because it was inevitable that 
they should have happened that way, but just be- 
cause they did so happen. Now, the bigger type 
of story, the type which Mr. Kipling himself has 
given us in abundance in his riper years, is that 
which leaves the conviction that it was inevitable, 
that it had to happen in a certain way, because the 
people in it had such-and-such natures and were 
therefore foreordained to act precisely so. In his 
earlier stories he was inordinately fond of invoking 
Fate to cut short a tangle, thus begging the main 
question, but securing a touch of sensational 
horror. Thus, in The Tertium Quid, a prospective 
elopement is cut short, not by any deliberate ac- 
tion on the part of the man and woman involved, 
but by a catastrophe due to the breaking away of 
a rain-washed embankment ; and the man makes no 
answer to the woman's despairing cry, because he 
is lying underneath his horse, nine hundred feet 
below the clifF, " spoiling a patch of Indian 
corn." And again, even in the fine artistry of 



128 RUDYARD KIPLING 

Without Benefit of Clergy/, we realize, that, as a 
protest against racial intermarriage, the argu- 
ment is weakened by the form of death both of 
mother and of child — because it is impossible to 
hold the mixed marriage responsible for the fact 
that an epidemic of fever and of cholera happen to 
choose this particular woman and child among the 
victims. 

Perfect self-assurance sometimes covers a mul- 
titude of sins ; and the assurance of Mr. Kipling 
in those earlier days was nothing if not perfect. 
He consistently assumed a studied pose, the pose 
of the man for whom life contains no surprises, 
the weary cynic who is quite sure that he knows 
precisely what is wrong with the world and smiles 
with the infinite superiority of vast experience over 
the follies of potentates and of governments. He 
was still separated by half a lifetime from the 
mature Kipling who has learned to express a 
deeper wisdom in stories fitted to the understand- 
ing of little children. He had not quite yet out- 
grown that bumptiousness of youth which thinks 
to prove itself manly by professing a scorn of 
young women. It is this feature, among others, no 
doubt, which was so keenly felt by Henry James 
when he wrote with one of his inimitable flashes of 
comparison that Mr. Kipling's " extreme youth is 
indeed what I may call his window-bar — the sup- 
port on which he somewhat rowdily leans while he 



RUDYARD KIPLING 129 

looks down at the human scene with his pipe in his 
teeth," 

Yet, with all their shortcomings, their auda- 
cious disregard of technique, which has made the 
" splendid carelessness " of Mr. Kipling a favor- 
ite phrase for critics to conjure with, those stories 
caught the imagination of the public with a swift- 
ness and a permanance almost without parallel. 
People did not realize that even while they were 
reading the rapid output of American and Eng- 
lish reprints of earlier Indian volumes, the author 
had already, in a measure, outgrown the mood 
that begot them, that his eye was opening upon a 
wider horizon. In literature as well as in life, no 
man can serve two masters — no man with Kip- 
ling's rugged sincerity and sledge-hammer earnest- 
ness can keep one creed of politics, morals and 
religion for his verse, and another for his prose. 
It has never been adequately pointed out how 
closely the dominant moods of Kipling's poems at 
any epoch have found an echo in his other writ- 
ings. " Mandalay," for instance, you will find al- 
ready blocked out in the rough in Letters from 
the East, down to the Burmah girl, and the che- 
root, and the hathis piling teak. " The Truce of 
the Bear " was the product of the same mind that 
was brooding in Kim over the " great game " of 
strategy played in India against the standing 
menace to the northern frontier. And the Kip- 



130 RUDYARD KIPLING 

ling of later years, absorbed in dreams of Anglo- 
Saxon supremacy and voicing in dynamic verse 
the pent-up popular opinions of a nation, could 
not, if he would, keep these thoughts out of the 
short stories which comprise his volume of 
Traffics and Discoveries. That is why a reader, 
here and there, who is not interested in the des- 
tinies of England, or the shortcomings of her 
army and navy, or the ethics of her struggle with 
the Boers, but who did care very much for the pic- 
turesqueness of Kipling's India, with its palm 
trees and its sunshine and its dearth of the Ten 
Commandments, not unnaturally lays down such a 
volume as Traffics and Discoveries with a keen 
sense of disillusion. 

Nevertheless, when, in the fullness of time, the 
life-work of Rudyard Kipling comes to be weighed 
in the balance in its entirety, it is safe to predict 
that the volumes which will necessarily receive a 
detailed consideration, will not be Soldiers Three 
nor Plain Tales from the Hills nor Barrack- 
Room Ballads; they will be, if one may venture 
upon what Mr. James calls the luxury of prophe- 
sying — the Jungle Books, as a unique childhood 
classic, Kim, as the author's highest attainment 
in fiction, and The Five Nations, as an apotheosis 
of Anglo-Saxon supremacy and a most interesting 
human document into the bargain. Even in an 
article on Mr. Kipling as a story teller, it is im- 



RUDYARD KIPLING 131 

possible to pass these poems over in silence, for 
they form the key to so much of his later prose. 
They stand as a sort of personal creed, a con- 
fession of faith in the British Empire. Mr. Kip- 
ling has an unfaltering belief in the divine right of 
the Anglo-Saxon to inherit the earth, and in this 
spirit he dedicated these poems to the " Five Free 
Nations," the mother Island and the Colonies that 
already encircle the globe. Probably no other 
poet has so curiously blended the spirit of Impe- 
rialism with such genuine democracy. It is not 
merely the prerogative of the Anglo-Saxon — The 
White Man par excellence — to overrun the four 
quarters of the globe, sword in hand — it is his 
duty, the "White Man's Burden," to conquer and 
civilize perforce " the new-court, sullen peoples, 
half-devil and half-child." No poet of Homeric 
days ever sang the glories of war with more whole- 
souled enthusiasm. The soldier's life is " the lord- 
liest life on earth," and when he writes of it, if 
only in a " Service Song," his very meter takes on a 
martial spirit ; one hears, behind and through the 
words, the sound of bugle calls, the tramp, tramp, 
tramp of many men, the dominant note of fife and 
drum that set the reader's blood tingling and his 
feet to beating time with contagious enthusiasm 
as he reads. 

Peace, Mr. Kipling teaches, is to be had only at 
the price of war ; army and navy are the bulwarks 



132 RUDYARD KIPLING 

that the forefathers reared for England's protec- 
tion, like the dikes that the Hollanders reared to 
keep out the sea — they can be maintained only at 
the price of eternal vigilance : 

Now we can only wait till the day^ wait and apportion 

our shame! 
These are the dikes our fathers left^ but we would 

not look at the same. 
Time and again were we warned of the dikes, time 

and again we delayed; 
Now, it may fall, we have slain our sons, as our 

fathers we have betrayed. 

And again, in " The Islanders," — that scathing 
and it may be intemperate indictment of " flan- 
neled fools " and " muddied oafs," — he reiterates 
this same idea of neglected duty and trust be- 
trayed. Civilization, he insists, 

. . . was not made with the mountains, it is not one 

with the deep. 
Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep. 
Men, not children, not servants, or kinsfolk called 

from afar. 
But each man born in the island broke to the matter 

of war. 

Yet, for all his imperialism, for all that he is the 
self-constituted laureate of " The Five Free Na- 
tions that are peers among their peers," — that he 
hails the Commonwealth of Australia as the Young 



RUDYARD KIPLING 133 

Queen, and Canada as Our Lady of the Snows — 
he is nevertheless at heart the poet of the barrack- 
room still, in the best sense of the term — the poet 
who sings the praises of the rank and file, in the 
armies of peace as well as in the armies of war. 
In the old days, it was " not a Duke nor Earl nor 
yet a Viscount," whom he chose to sing; it was 
plain Mr. Thomas Atkins. And still to-day, in 
poems like " Pharaoh and the Serjeant," it is not 
the "big, brass general," it is the neglected and 
forgotten sergeant, " the man in khaki kit who can 
handle men a bit, with his bedding labeled Sergeant 
Whatsisname." From first to last, Mr. Kipling 
has shown unmeasured scorn for bureaucracy, the 
red tape of officialdom, the tinsel glitter of empty 
titles. There is nothing more eminently healthy 
in all his writings than the admirable sanity, the 
unmistakable earnestness with which he recognizes 
honest work, " the simple, sheer, sufficing, sane 
result of labor spent," and gives credit where it 
belongs, to 

. . . the men who merely do the work 
For which they draw the wage, — 

Men like to gods that do the work 
For which they draw the wage. 

There are other poems which do not need to be 
separately proclaimed — poems like " The Truce of 
the Bear," "The Islanders," "The Lesson"— 



134. RUDYARD KIPLING 

poems that are bound to be read and remembered 
as long as the events that they commemorate, be- 
cause they are not poems alone, but political pam- 
phlets in verse, audacious indictments of existing 
conditions, that passed from lip to lip with the 
speed of wings and refused to be forgotten. In 
spite of his verbal audacities, Mr. Kipling has at 
heart always been something of an epicure in his 
use of words. He appreciates, to a nicety, their 
ultimate shade of meaning, he knows how to wring 
from them their uttermost force and energy. 
Rugged strength was what he wanted first of all 
in these poems of big, vital, ethical problems — 
and he obtained it with a simplicity of word and 
phrase that one must marvel at while one reads. 
Not that his later verse is altogether lacking in 
his old-time verbal daring. Such a poem as " The 
Sea and the Hills " is full of curious alliterations, 
words forced into strange and unexpected partner- 
ships, sonorous syllables following one another 
with a rush and tumble and cumulative force of 
many waves: 

Who hath desired the Sea? The sight of salt water 

unbounded — 
The heave and the salt and the hurl and the crash 

of the comber wind-hounded? 

But for the most part the effective lines of the 
later poems, the lines which linger and echo in the 



RUDYARD KIPLING 135 

memory are simple Anglo-Saxon lines, monosylla- 
bic, almost prose. Some of them have already 
passed into circulation, been added to the current 
coin of English speech. Whatever may be thought 
of the wisdom or the justice of such poems as 
" The Lesson " or " The Islanders," there can be 
nothing but admiration for the splendid audacity 
which inspired them. 

Just as it is impossible to read " The Truce of 
the Bear " without thinking of Kim, in the same 
way it is impossible to consider Kim apart from its 
relation to the Jungle Books; for these two books 
are bound together by such a logical sequence that 
it is strange so little emphasis has even yet been 
laid upon their obvious relation to each other. 
Like his own British soldier in " Mandalay," Mr. 
Kipling obviously felt, for many years, a lingering 
nostalgia for the Orient : " If you've 'eard the 
East a-callin', why, you won't 'eed nothin' else." 
He industriously tried to heed other things, the 
fishing banks of Newfoundland, the school-boy life 
in England, the veldt and kopje of South Africa. 
Yet all the while he was plainly haunted by a per- 
sistent, yet elusive desire to write a book, a big 
book, embodying the life of India as a whole, with 
all its wonderful maze of conflicting beliefs and 
superstitions and races and castes. 

Every reader of Plain Tales from the Hills 
must remember Wressley of the Foreign Office, 



136 RUDYARD KIPLING 

poor Wressley who wrote a book on India, with his 
heart and soul at the end of his pen, catching and 
analyzing Rajahs, and "tracing them up into the 
mists of Time and Beyond," for ten hours a day, 
and in the end his book was a Book, because he 
had put into it not only his vast special knowl- 
edge, but, " a spirit, a poetry, an inwoven human 
touch which are beyond all special knowledge." 
Wressley did all this for the sake of " one frivolous 
little girl," Tillie Venner. Do you happen to re- 
member her summing up of the book? " Oh, your 
book? It's all about those howwid wajahs. I 
didn't understand it." 

Now, when at last it came Mr. Kipling's turn to 
write another book on India, it also proved to be 
" a book which is a Book." It was written, if ever 
any book was, with heart and soul and mind at the 
end of his pen, and inspired with that all-seeing 
comprehension that makes its pages luminous ; and 
no sooner had it appeared than a certain class of 
critics, like so many Tillie Venners, began to say, 
under varied forms and twists of phrase, " Oh, 
your book? It's all about rajahs, and babus, and 
lamas, and we can't understand it." But here the 
analogy ceases, for Tillie Venner not only hurt 
Wressley, but was the moral death of him ; while 
no amount of unfair criticism stayed Mr. Kipling 
in his chosen course nor lessened the worth of 
what is still his finest achievement. 



RUDYARD KIPLING 137 

The central thought which was destined eventu- 
ally to beget Kim seems to have taken shape 
slowly, and to have deterred, perhaps even over- 
awed Mr. Kipling, by its magnitude. It seemed 
at first too big ever to be embodied in a picture of 
real life, and accordingly his first attempts at in- 
terpreting it took the form of fable, just as the 
Hindoos themselves, centuries ago, chose to em- 
body their wisdom in the beast tales of the Hito- 
padega or the Katasaritsagara. To those who 
read beneath the lines, the Jungle Books are far 
more than a new childhood classic. They are the 
life of modern India, told in allegory, and in Ka 
and Bagheera and all the rest we have the types 
of native life, with its stored-up wisdom of old, 
primeval instincts, its childlike simplicity of out- 
look upon the present-day world. The same con- 
ception which gave us the Jungle Books took final 
shape in Kim^ and to those who enjoy such lit- 
erary analysis I suggest the task of following out 
the analogy between the animal personages in the 
former and the chief actors in the latter book. 

It is quite likely that Kim^ this story of the 
Little Friend of All the World, is not destined 
ever to be popular in the broad sense in which 
Without Benefit of Clergy and The Man Who 
Would Be King are popular. It is too especial, 
too profound, too esoteric. But those to whom it 
appeals and who have come under its spell find 



138 RUDYARD KIPLING 

some difficulty in speaking of it temperately. 
There can be no question that India is there in its 
pages — the whole of India as it is to-day, with all 
its numberless and intricate substrata of mixed 
faiths and languages and races, reaching back 
through the uncounted years to the time when 
those first and unknown Aryan pioneers pushed 
their ways southward through the mountain passes 
to find a resting place beside the waters of the 
upper Indus. There is something of epic bigness 
in the book, the comprehensiveness of view that 
makes the petty things of life so small and yet 
throws those minute details which really count into 
such luminous relief. The India of Kipling is so 
manifold that it is not easy to grasp. There is 
the superficial Anglo-Indian side, with its social 
functions and its Mrs. Hauksbees, and its " Res- 
cues of Pluffles," and the like; there is the obvious 
native life, with its sunshine and its palm trees 
and its tinkly temple bells — the side to which the 
Ortherises and the Mulvaneys get a good deal 
nearer than all the Mrs. Hauksbees and Captain 
Gadsbys ever do. Back of this, layer upon layer, 
extends the personal, intimate, unrevealed life of 
the Hindoo, the result of untold generations, the 
sum total of instincts and traditions and stored- 
up wisdom of past ages, the purport of which the 
average Occidental mind can scarcely fathom. 
And lastly, there is that stirring, vital side, the 



RUDYARD KIPLING 139 

secret conflict between East and West now going 
on silently but surely — the Great Game, as Mr. 
Kipling calls it — the game that is being played 
night and day by the Anglo-Saxon secret service, 
which stretches in a vast reticulation, like a 
gigantic checkerboard, throughout the length and 
breadth of the peninsula. 

The way in which Mr. Kipling has chosen to set 
this vast, complex picture before us is little less 
than a stroke of genius. It was too big to be given 
in its entirety ; so he has shown only a frag- 
ment, a cross-section, as it were, seen through the 
eyes of a boy, a poor little waif called Kim. It has 
pleased some reviewers to compare Kim with the 
little drummer boys in The Drums of the Fore- 
and-Aft. Personally, I fail to see the resemblance. 
Kim is, in spirit, a foster-brother of Mowgli, a sort 
of missing link between the primitiveness of the 
East and the civilization of the West. He is the 
son of a certain Kimball O'Hara, one time Color 
Sergeant of the Irish regiment known as the 
Mavericks, who had married a nurse-maid in his 
colonel's family, and after her death had gone the 
pace and met the end of many another broken- 
down white man in India. Kim had been adopted 
by a half-caste woman in the bazaar of Lahore. 
He had grown up, not merely a la grace de Dieu, 
but under co-operative protection of several 
hundred native gods, to all of whom he extended 



140 RUDYARD KIPLING 

polite recognition, without standing in awe of any 
of them. Kim's father had left papers which would 
have gained him protection either from the regi- 
ment, or from the Jadrogher or local masonic 
lodge; but instead of using them, Kim wore these 
papers in a leather amulet case around his neck, 
and " carefully avoided missionaries and white men 
of serious aspect, who asked who he was and what 
he did." The whole story, to put it briefly, deals 
with the manner in which this small boy of no ap- 
parent account, who has the training of the 
Oriental grafted upon the intelligence of the West, 
is gradually prepared to become one of the cog- 
wheels in that complicated mechanism which goes 
to make up the Great Game. Of the details of the 
story and the motley crowd of personages that 
take part in it, this is hardly the place to speak. 
They are figures which, taken out of their setting, 
are unintelligible to the Western mind. Indeed, 
the danger is that the best of them, even the old 
Thibetan Lama, will not be understood beyond a 
certain point. This venerable figure, from his far- 
off lamasery in the mountains of Thibet, who has 
come on his hopeless quest in search of a 
sacred river, the river that gushed forth where 
Buddha's arrow once fell, is a combination of 
stored-up wisdom and child-like simplicity that is 
likely to be wholly misunderstood by many a West- 
ern reader. There is something about his vener- 



RUDYARD KIPLING 141 

able dignity that is reminiscent of certain passages 
in King Lear. But one might go on indefinitely 
speculating about the significance of this book and 
of its separate characters. There can be no doubt 
that as a whole it symbolizes the gulf which sep- 
arates Orient and Occident. 

To discuss in detail any other volume by Mr. 
Kipling, after Kim, would be to indulge in an anti- 
climax. There are some who find a special merit 
in the mysticism of stories like Wireless and They; 
there are others who exalt Puch of Pook's Hill to 
the position of his crowning achievment — a posi- 
tion which, if books could be supposed to have 
feelings, would sadly embarrass it to live up to. 
But if we forget for a moment the question of 
relative greatness, and speak only of individual 
preferences, then there are a score of titles that 
clamor for a passing word. Personally, without 
being blind to its numerous shortcomings, I must 
confess that The Story of the Gadshys is even yet 
numbered among my minor literary vices. It is 
crude, it is very young, yet it has its big moments 
— that, for instance, in "The Tents of Kedar," 
where Mrs. Herriott drops her light tone and says 
tensely, " My God, Pip ! I was a good woman 
once." Mr. Kipling must have shaken hands with 
himself when he wrote that line. The Mulvaney 
stories contain probably a large percentage of the 
best of his early stories; it is my own loss that, 



U2 RUDYARD KIPLING 

with the exception of The Courting of Dinah 
Shadd, thej leave me cold. The Mark of the Beast 
and At the End of the Passage miss their goal, like 
a spiritual seance after you know the trick — ^but 
the atmosphere of the second of these stories, with 
its heat and loneliness, of the kind that drives one 
mad, is brutally real — it can hardly be read with- 
out a sense of suffocation, and the burn of prickly 
heat breaking out all over one. On the other 
hand. Beyond the Pale, On the City Wall, Without 
Benefit of Clergy, are among the great short 
stories of the world. They bear the test of un- 
counted re-readings, they wear well. 

And side by side with them belong certain 
stories of his mature period ; stories of widely dif- 
ferent substance, the product of different influ- 
ences, yet refusing to be ignored, even in the hasti- 
est summary of his works. In this choice I find 
myself passing over the stories which, in popular 
estimation, are his most characteristic, the stories 
bom of his ability to see the poetry of mechanical 
power. Undoubtedly, he has accomplished more 
than one striking tour de force in this direction: 
he stands alone in his ability to see the drama 
latent in the motor car, the railway engine, the 
rapid fire of modern armament. The red glow of a 
furnace, the wild gyrations of a broken piston rod, 
are to him as much a part of the vital, tingling life 
of to-day as the flush on a woman's cheek or the 



RUDYARD KIPLING 143 

contortions of a man in his death agony. Through 
most of his later stories he makes us hear the 
throb of machinery, the hiss of escaping steam, the 
mighty drone of huge propellers ; and, as a symbol 
of the encroachment of materialism, our old 
friends, the immortal Soldiers Three, give place 
to one Pyecroft, a naval machinist, who weighs 
and measures life in the language of the engine 
room. 

Many of these stories are curiosities of the pass- 
ing hour. But there are others, in which mechan- 
ics play little or no part, that have a far better 
right, and better chance to live. There is, for in- 
stance, a unique little bit of dialogue. Below the 
Milldam, written somewhat in the mood of the 
Jungle Books. Surely there is no other living 
writer to whom it would have occurred to write a 
pungent satire upon English conservatism and the 
encroachment of modern thought, in the form of a 
discussion between a Gray Cat, a Black Rat and 
an ancient Mill Wheel, that creakingly drones out 
whole pages of the Doomsday Book as it monot- 
onously grinds forth its daily task. Then there 
is An Habitation Enforced, written in a manner 
reminiscent of Henry James, telling how a young 
American couple who have gone abroad, seeking 
for a quiet spot where the husband may heal his 
shattered nerves and escape for the time from the 
killing drive of American business, temporarily 



144 RUDYARD KIPLING 

rent a beautiful old English estate, and little by 
little find themselves taken possession of by the 
place, by its traditions, by its delicious yet in- 
tangible charm. It is a story which shows more 
plainly than any other the distance that Mr. Kip- 
ling has traveled since he wrote The Story of the 
Gadshys — it is the difference between youth's 
scorn of marriage and of the safe prosperity of 
country life, and the wisdom of middle age, that 
sees the tranquil beauty of domesticity, the mellow 
charm of an English landscape. 

There is just one more story that refuses to be 
passed over, for it has the double appeal of fault- 
less technique and a haunting personality — Mrs. 
Bathurst. A great deal has been said about the 
incomprehensibility of this story, its downright 
opacity. There are people of average intelligence 
who will assure you that after reading it twice and 
even three times, they can make nothing at all out 
of it. As a matter of fact, there is nothing ob- 
scure about what Mr. Kipling has seen fit to tell us 
— only, as often happens in real life, we are not 
privileged to hear more than a few disjointed, ran- 
dom facts — " the rest is silence." What we do 
hear is that Vickerey, a warrant officer, with a 
wife living in England, met a certain Mrs. Bath- 
urst, attractive and popular keeper of a public 
bar in Auckland, much frequented by naval men. 
What there was between Vickerey and Mrs. Bath- 



RUDYARD KIPLING 145 

urst, we are not told, but it is implied that " there 
must have been a good deal." At all events, Vick- 
erey leaves her, not knowing, we infer, the real 
extent of her interest in him — perhaps, also, dog- 
gedly determined to do his duty by the wife in 
England. Then later, when his duties have taken 
him to South Africa, he idly drifts, one day when 
he has shore leave, into a cinematograph show; 
and among the pictures is one showing a London 
railway station, a train pulling in, coming to a 
stop, the doors of the compartments opening, and 
then suddenly, beyond the shadow of a merciful 
doubt, Mrs. Bathurst stepping out, and coming 
down the platform, looking straight ahead of her, 
with the unforgotten " blindish look in her eyes." 
What Vickerey feels is not recorded; but just at 
this time he has news that his wife is dead, and we 
conclude that, whether right or wrong in his be- 
lief, Vickerey believes that Mrs, Bathurst has fol- 
lowed him to London, is perhaps even now on her 
way to the Cape. Day after day, so long as it 
remains in town, Vickerey haunts the cinemato- 
graph, waiting dumbly, blindly, for the few brief 
seconds when he may once more see Mrs. Bathurst 
come down the platform, with the " blindish look 
in her eyes." In the belief of his friends he is tem- 
porarily out of his mind, and his Captain appar- 
ently concurs in this verdict; for after an official 
interview, which is one of the things we are not 



146 RUDYARD KIPLING 

permitted to overhear, he sends Viclierey up 
country, to recuperate; then comes the news 
that Vickerey has deserted, and mystery for 
the time being swallows him up. Then, at the 
end, another broken fragment of grisly import ; 
far up the line of rails running northward 
through newly opened country, a lightning-seared 
tree, and beneath it two charred forms, literally 
human charcoal, the one still upright, looking 
down on " his mate." And some false teeth, and 
a few tattooed letters, standing out whitish 
against the black, complete the identification. 
Now, the whole strength of this story lies in the 
method of its telling. You hear it from the 
lips of stolid, callous naval men, rude of speech, 
coarse in their views of life in general and of 
women in particular. And through the medium of 
their very coarseness, their picturesque vulgarity, 
their lack of finer perceptions, you get an impres- 
sion of a tragic drama which no amount of finer 
methods could have given. In its suggestion of 
vague, unspeakable things, lying behind the writ- 
ten words, lengthening vistas where the imagina- 
tion may stray and lose itself, it stands as an ex- 
ceptional tour de force, one of those few stories 
that you cannot forget, even if you would. 

It is/because he can thus work magic with words, 
because he has an unmatched genius for taking life 
as a Vhole, with all its crudeness, its sordidness, its 



RUDYARD KIPLING 147 

materialism, and weaving it into pictures of haunt- 
ing mystery and romance, that Mr. Kipling holds 
among story tellers of to-day a prestige which 
shall not soon be taken from him. But behind the 
craft of the story teller, beyond the lure of the 
unfolded tale, lies the potency of a personality, 
the dynamic force of a mind that, right or wrong, 
has an unshaken confidence in its own philosophy 
of Hfe. 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

On the question of popular judgment in art and 
letters, Mr. Ruskin uttered very nearly the ulti- 
mate word when he pointed out the illogic of ex- 
pecting the opinions of a crowd to be correct, when 
the opinions of any individual in that crowd were 
more than likely to be wrong. Black is not made 
white by calling it so, and the mere fact that a 
mob of a thousand are simultaneously shouting 
their mistake does not make it one shade the whiter 
than a single voice would do. It follows that, 
when an author of real artistic worth and delicacy 
Ox style, after being consistently neglected by the 
general public, suddenly receives the popular vote, 
it is the part of wisdom to scrutinize his later work 
with more than usual care and question seriously 
whether he has not sacrificed some of his ideals. 
A case in point is afforded by Mr. William J. 
Locke, author of The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne 
and The Beloved Vagabond, also — and there is a 
sense of anti-climax in naming them — of Septimus 
and Simon the Jester, 

Let us ask briefly just what Mr. Locke stands 
for in contemporary fiction, and what his own at- 
148 




WIIXIAM JOHX LOCKE 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 149 

titude is toward the craft of story-telling. To any 
one asking these questions a few years ago, the 
answer would have been that Mr. Locke did not 
consider himself primarily a man of letters ; that 
he was, on the contrary, known to the world 
chiefly through his chosen profession of architec- 
ture, and more especially through his post of 
honor as Secretary of the Royal Institute of Brit- 
ish Architects ; and that his novel-writing was 
mainly a relaxation, an avenue of escape from the 
daily routine, a method of enjoying indirectly a 
certain blithe and irresponsible Bohemianism. But 
as a matter of fact, no great number of people 
were asking these questions a. few years ago ; there 
was no urgency on the part of the general public 
to acquire information concerning Mr. Locke's 
personality or literary methods ; one could search 
the index of periodical literature in vain for any 
special articles devoted to him. In England he 
had a small but slowly augmenting circle of 
readers. In America he had practically no fol- 
lowing at all, and the reviews which greeted each 
successive book, while often cordially recognizing 
their peculiar quality, were apt to refer to him 
vaguely as " a certain W. J. Locke," as though 
his name awakened no chord of memory in the 
reviewer's mind. But presently a number of little 
things happened, the cumulative force of which 
must have caused considerable surprise to a per- 



150 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

son of so retiring a disposition as Mr. Locke. In 
the first place, the experiment of building a play 
from the Morals of Marcus resulted in a very big 
London success, in spite of the fact that at the time 
there was a feud between the actor-manager, Mr. 
Arthur Bourchier, and the dramatic critics, in 
consequence of which the play was practically ig- 
nored by the daily press. Then came the Ameri- 
can production of Marcus, followed by the dram- 
atization of what is easily Mr. Locke's best 
work. The Beloved Vagabond; then the sudden 
awakening of the general public to the fact that 
he was an author about whom they ought to 
know something; and finally the serialization of 
Mr. Locke's next novel, Septimus, in a popular 
magazine of big circulation. That was, of course, 
an immense difference between the modest succes 
d^estime of former years and the new flamboyant 
heralding with its award of crowded houses and 
a place among the Six Best Selling Books. And 
because all this is calculated to confuse one's 
sense of relative values, it seems worth while to 
try to forget, for the moment, these misleading 
factors of popular success and to ask calmly and 
judicially what Septimus really stands for in the 
literary development of Mr. Locke and how the 
workmanship of his later volumes compares with 
that of his earlier. 

There is, on the surface of it, something para- 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 151 

doxical in the contrast between the quiet correct- 
ness of the author's personality and the riotous 
unconventionality of his themes. Among the many 
utterances of Sir Marcus which one suspects tol 
be the embodiment of Mr. Locke's own views, his 
private philosophy of life, is the following sug- 
gestive passage, which offers a key to the puzzle : 

Hasn't a phase of the duality of our nature ever 
struck you? We have a primary or everyday nature 
— a thing of habit, tradition, circumstance; and we 
also have a secondary nature which clamors for vari- 
ous sensations and is quite contented with vicarious 
gratification. There are delicately fibered novelists 
who satisfy a sort of secondary Berserkism by writ- 
ing books whose pages reek with bloodshed. The most 
placid, benevolent, gold-spectacled paterfamilias I 
I know, a man who thinks it cruel to eat live oysters, 
has a curious passion for crime and gratifies it by 
turning his study into a musee macabre of murderers' 
relics. In the same way predestined spinsters obtain 
vicarious enjoyment of the tender passion by reading 
highly colored love-stories. 

There in a nutshell we have the secret source of 
the delightful unconventionality of Mr. Locke's 
stories, the charm of irresponsible Bohemianism 
with which they were permeated. This quiet, cor- 
rect gentleman of forty-nine years — he was born 
in the Barbados, March 20, 1863 — this graduate 



152 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

of St. John's College, Cambridge, with special 
honors in mathematics ; this dignified Secretary of 
the Royal Institute of British Architects, has a 
secondary nature which craves the varied sensa- 
tion of the Vie de Boheme, and gratifies it vicar- 
iously in his leisure hours by writing the annals of 
more than one lovable and philosophic vagabond. 
As has already been intimated, there are no Eng- 
lish writers with whom Mr. Locke is closely re- 
lated, in style, mood or subject-matter. He is 
quite sui generis^ an unimitative as he is inimitable. 
A rebellious vein of romanticism, a love of the 
quixotic, a tender chivalry, an indulgent irony: 
these are some of the qualities possessed by his 
most characteristic volumes. His deliciously irre- 
sponsible vagaries, his whimsical tenderness, his 
audacious disregard of the conventions of story- 
writing, and not less than these his undeniable 
quality of style entitle him to be recognized as one 
of that small group who have a chance to outlive 
that great host of ephemeral novelists who write 
for the day and hour. He is not a master of fiction 
in the sense in which we think of Maupassant and 
Meredith and Henry James — masters equally of 
technique and of the truth of life. Mr. Locke's 
mastery is of an entirely different sort. His 
power lies almost wholly in the personal equation, 
the whimsical, extravagant, ironical conceptions 
that he flings before us often in defiance of com- 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 153 

mon sense and the laws of probability — now and 
then almost crossing the border-line of caricature, 
and yet kept curiously real by the very genuine 
and whole-hearted understanding of human na- 
ture that lies behind them. In the feeblest passages 
of his earlier works, his romanticism sometimes be- 
trayed him into lapses to which an unkind critic 
might suggest a parallel from Ouida. In the best 
pages of Marcus Ordeyne and The Beloved Vaga- 
bond there is an intangible charm which finds its 
kinship in French literature, rather than in Eng- 
lish — that typically Gallic vein of satire and 
humor which in one epoch and enviroment pro- 
duced a Henry Murger, and in another an Ana- 
tole France. Mr. Locke could never have created 
a Sylvestre Bonnard or a M. Bergerat, but he 
might have embodied their philosophy, their erudi- 
tion, their love of letters in some one of the 
patient and courageous denizens of that bohemia 
which he haunts by proxy and which Murger him- 
self once defined as " the antechamber to the 
Academy, the hospital or the morgue." 

With the appearance of The Beloved Vagabond^ 
Mr. Locke rounded out his first ten volumes ; and, 
while these show a fairly steady advance in con- 
structive ability, it may be said without fear of 
contradiction, that if measured by his plots alone, 
Mr. Locke would always be rated very much 
below his real worth. It is curious to see, in his 



154* WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

earlier volumes, what a mistaken importance he at- 
tached to plot, how he tortured the law of prob- 
abilities and racked his imagination for startling 
and unheard-of situations. As a matter of fact, 
the plot is the part for which the sympathetic 
reader cares least in Mr. Locke's books. What 
ultimately happens to his characters is a minor 
consideration; what they think and say and do 
from day to day makes up the vital interest. And 
one suspects that it is the same with Mr. Locke 
himself as with his readers ; he loves his characters 
less for what they achieve than for what they are. 
He no longer troubles himself to seek for great 
variety in plot. Like Marcel's famous painting 
of " The Passage of the Red Sea," in La Vie de 
BoTieme, which underwent an annual metamor- 
phosis into " The Passage of the Rubicon," " The 
Passage of the Bersina," and finally " The Port of 
Marseilles," the ground plans of several of Mr. 
Locke's books prove to be clever variations on 
one and the same air. You know the typical 
Ouida plot, the mistaken generosity that makes a 
man give up a title, a fortune and the woman he 
loves, take upon himself the crime of another, and 
disappear from the world that knew him into a 
life of vagabondage and obscurity. Worked out 
with Ouida's riotous melodrama, her ignorance of 
life, her false ideals, we have Pascarel and Under 
Two Flags. Substitute for her deficiencies a rare 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 155 

sense of humor, a delicious philosophy of life, a 
command of irony as dexterous as the rapier play 
of a practised swordsman, and you get the meas- 
ure that separates William John Locke from 
Ouida. His heroes are often purposely, extrava- 
gantly, incredibly quixotic. They go into exile 
to shield a rival, as in Where Love Is, or to save 
the heroine's father from bankruptcy, as in The 
Beloved Vagabond, And the fact that the reader 
accepts their most preposterous actions with 
equanimity, and even with approval, is Mr. Locke's 
sufficient justification. 

The truth is that the plot is the thing about 
which Mr. Locke, in his secret heart, has come to 
care very little; it is a mere scaff*olding on which 
to erect a new structure of flashing epigrams, di- 
verting paradoxes, absurdities veiling a wise 
philosophy of life. But a thoughtful survey of his 
books in the order of production shows at least 
this: that he has steadily weaned himself away 
from his first tendencies toward melodrama; that 
while one and all of his books are impossible when 
measured by life's actualities, the later ones have 
grown steadily more deliciously, refreshingly im- 
possible with less and less of the ranting, bom- 
bastic, Ouidaesque tone of his first efforts. Un- 
doubtedly, the process of development culminated 
in The Beloved Vagabond. If Mr. Locke is ever 
to give us a better book, or even as good a book, 



166 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

he must do so by giving us something radically 
different, and not a compound of the same ingre- 
dients mixed according to the same receipt. And 
a mixing of the same old ingredients, as we shall 
presently see, is unfortunately a fair description 
of the way in which he has compounded more than 
one of his later volumes. 

It is hardly worth while to survey in sequence 
all of Mr. Locke's earlier volumes in order to see 
the essential sameness of their structure ; it will be 
sufficient to single out just two or three typical 
samples such as Derelicts, Where Love Is and 
Idols. Derelicts has one peculiarity: the hero, 
Stephen Chiseley, actually committed the fraud — 
or was it embezzlement? — for which he suffered a 
term of years in prison. Upon his release, he finds 
only one old friend who stands by him, a charm- 
ing little lady, Yvonne Latour, a public singer of 
some note, whose experiment in matrimony has 
been so unfortunate that she cannot even feign 
sorrow when the news comes from Paris that the 
dissipated, absinthe-drinking French tenor who 
was her husband is dead. Now, Chiseley has a 
cousin, Everard, who is a dignitary of much im- 
portance in the Church of England, a man whose 
religion is of the pharisaic kind that teaches him 
it is his duty to disown and have no dealings with 
his erring relative. It happens, further, that this 
austere canon falls captive to the charms of " little 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 157 

brown Yvonne " and marries her ; and when sub- 
sequently the disreputable French husband turns 
out to be still living, the canon, with much heart- 
felt reluctance, discards Yvonne and has himself 
transferred to a charge in Australia or New Zea- 
land, without making any provision for the woman 
he had believed to be his wife. Luckily for her, at 
the moment of her darkest trial, when a serious ill- 
ness has robbed her of a livelihood by ruining her 
voice permanently, Stephen drifts once more across 
her path and these two human derelicts find mutual 
comfort and support in a purely platonic fellow- 
ship. And they never suspect it to be a basis for 
deeper feeling until the day comes when the canon 
returns to England to announce that the French- 
man is at last really dead and that he is eager to 
take Yvonne back and remarry her. And, of 
course, this is precisely the one thing that he will 
be unable to do, for she has outgrown him. Theft, 
drunkenness, bigamy, woven into a tissue of gross 
improbabilities — such is a fair summing up of a 
representative volume of Mr. Locke's very early 
work. 

In Where Love Is we have one of the first of the 
long series of delightful and eccentric Bohemians 
that are Mr. Locke's special and inevitable crea- 
tions. Jimmie Padgate, careless of dress and 
speech, superbly indifferent to conventions, has the 
misfortune to fall in love with Norma Hardacre, 



158 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

beautiful daughter of a worldly-minded mamma, 
and duly drilled in her duty to marry advanta- 
geously. So, when she crowns her mother's hopes 
by accepting the financially eligible, but morally 
unspeakable, Morland King, and certain disrepu- 
table episodes in King's past life insist on coming 
to light, Jimmie Padgate saves the situation by 
assuming the responsibility of King's wild oats — 
and incidentally receives a bullet from an angry 
fanatic bent on avenging the honor of King's 
victim, who had added self-murder to infanti- 
cide. Such is the choice assortment of crimes 
by the help of which Mr. Locke drives Jimmie Pad- 
gate into exile, estranges all his friends, ruins his 
chances of winning fame and fortune as an artist, 
and reduces him to a garret and a crust — and, 
what is more, a rather shabby garret and a pretty 
dry crust. The novel really does not get any- 
where ; but it does give Mr. Locke an opportunity 
to indulge in some rather caustic irony regarding 
the mutability of women ; because, after all. Norma 
Hardacre finds herself unable to put Jimmie out 
of her mind, and, much to the dismay of her fam- 
ily, consents to share his garret and his crust, and 
for a few brief hours raises Jimmie to the pinnacle 
of bliss. But it happens that when, by appoint- 
ment, she goes to join him in his much too aerial 
studio, and enters, out of breath, to find it empty, 
she is struck with the sordidness of it, the soiled 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 159 

tablecloth, the flj-specked walls, the cracked and 
grimy ceilings ; she realizes that she cannot face a 
succession of days and weeks and months in such 
surroundings. So she pens a hasty, conscience- 
stricken note and flees incontinently. 

Idols is easily the best example of Mr. Locke's 
earlier period. It is first of all a study of a woman 
who, having the opportunity to choose between two 
men, the one sterling and the other dross, takes 
th€ dross and spends bitter years in slowly learn- 
ing her mistake. Yet, although Hugh Colman is 
the man of sterling metal, he is human and he errs. 
He foolishly contracts a secret marriage with the 
daughter of a wealthy and influential Jew; and 
when, too late, he goes to the father to make a 
formal offer for her hand, he learns that the Jew's 
opposition is immovable and that he has guarded 
against such a marriage by disinheriting his 
daughter in case of it. The two have a violent al- 
tercation which is overheard by servants. Later 
in the night Colman joins his wife surreptitiously 
by means of a side window; and he is actually in 
the house of his father-in-law at the very moment 
when the old man is being murdered by another in- 
truder. It is inevitable that suspicion should fall 
upon Colman, and his arrest follows as a matter of 
course. His urgent request to Minna, his Jewish 
wife, to tell the truth and establish his alibi, is met 
by her frantic refusal, her tearful insistence that 



160 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

he shall keep his promise of secrecy, because to 
tell means to forfeit her inheritance. The court 
scene is the big moment in the book. Irene Mer- 
rian, the woman who has married the wrong man, 
the woman who has worshiped idols, mistaking 
them for gods, knows by intuition that Hugh Col- 
man, her husband's best friend and her own, is in- 
nocent ; she knows that her husband shares her be- 
lief ; she sees, day by day, as she attends the trial, 
how inexorable a network of condemnatory evi- 
dence is gathering around him. So, when she her- 
self is called to testify, she deliberately commits 
perjury, publicly swearing away her own honor 
and convincing the jury beyond a doubt that the 
prisoner was not in the vicinity of the murdered 
man. And when, crushed with the strain of the 
ordeal, she leaves the court, sustained, neverthe- 
lesSj by the sense of a duty performed and a friend 
saved, she discovers that she has convinced one 
more than she had intended. With the announce- 
ment that her husband will at once bring suit for 
divorce, the last of her idols crumbles into dust. 

Whether you approve of Idols or not, the fact 
remains that, up to the publication of The Morals 
of Marcus Ordeyne, it remained Mr. Locke's high- 
water mark in fiction. With this last-named book 
we come quite suddenly to the period of Mr. 
Locke's mature development. The Morals of Mar- 
cus Ordeyne is the first of his books that fully de- 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 161 

serves to be indorsed as refreshingly whimsical, 
the sort of book that might have been written by 
an Anglo-Saxon Anatole France in holiday mood. 
Yet told in epitome, it sounds like a tissue of ab- 
surdities. Marcus Ordeyne^ — Sir Marcus, to give 
him his due — is a bookworm and a confirmed 
bachelor, the hopeless sort of bachelor who oc- 
casionally enjoys a couple of hours with some 
child, because " the enjoyment is enhanced by the 
feeling of utter thankfulness that he is not my 
child, but somebody else's." The opening pages 
are a deliciously frank portrayal of egotistical 
content between his stolid English valet, Stenson, 
his fat French cook, Antoinette, his one-eyed cat, 
Polyphemus, his treasured cinquecento volumes 
and his long-standing and vaguely defined rela- 
tions with Judith, an intelligent and sympathetic 
little lady living in " the purlieus of Tottenham 
Court Road." And all of a sudden Sir Marcus's 
carefully planned scheme of existence, even his 
code of morals, is rudely shaken to its foundations 
b}^ a most unprecendented occurrence. Fate leads 
him one day to the Thames Embankment, where 
by rights nothing extraordinary should have hap- 
pened to him, but where, as a matter of fact, he 
encounters a strange young woman, a poor little 
waif whose only knowledge of life has been gleaned 
within the walls of an Eastern harem, and who is 
now utterly dazed and terrified by the rush and 



162 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

whirl of the metropolis. When this strange ap- 
parition in bizarre apparel appeals to him for 
help, and tells an extraordinary tale to account 
for her presence in London, it is the turn of Sir 
Marcus to feel dazed. It is not a tale which in- 
vites confidence, and Sir Marcus frankly disbe- 
lieves it until he looks into her big, innocent eyes. 
Then he capitulates. 

I told her to give me time. One is not in the 
habit of meeting abducted Lights of the Harem in 
the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National Lib- 
erty Club. It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence. 
I looked around me. Nothing seemed to have hap- 
pened during the last ten minutes. A pale yoimg 
man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when 
I entered, was reading a dirty pink newspaper. 
Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly. 
On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foli- 
age, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. 

And so on through a lengthy series of vivid 
trivialities the author makes his stage setting so 
real and his Sir Marcus so thoroughly human that 
by sheer force of contrast he wins credence for 
the young woman from the harem — and very 
largely because, however extraordinary we find 
her, we can never be any more astonished and be- 
wildered by her peculiarities than is Sir Marcus 
himself. The subsequent story, which is of the 
kind that might easily be ruined by a clumsy touch, 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 163 

and which in point of fact is delicately handled 
almost to the last, pictures the serious havoc 
wrought upon Sir Marcus after he has, out of 
pure benevolence, installed this unsophisticated 
and embarrassing young person in his bachelor 
apartments. It seems a pity that a volume which 
for the most part is written in a vein of indulgent 
satire and tender humor should be marred by the 
false touch of the harem girl's elopement with 
another man. 

With The Beloved Vagabond we come at last 
into full sympathy with Mr. Locke's methods and 
attitude toward life. In regard to his earlier 
books the reader was apt to waste his energy in 
trying to be sympathetic where Mr. Locke was se- 
cretly derisive. But in this volume, which, quite 
regardless of its ultimate worth, is without ques- 
tion the biggest achievement of Mr. Locke's career, 
reader and author are for the first time wholly in 
accord. The truth is that no one really cares why 
the Beloved Vagabond went into exile, why he be- 
came a stranger to the life to which he was born 
and dropped down to a shiftless, irresponsible 
vagabondage. One is satisfied to know that the 
metamorphosis was accomplished, for without it 
we never should have had Berzelius Nibbidard 
Paragot, slovenly and erudite, impecunious and 
arrogant, disreputable and chivalrous, inherently 
irresponsible and lovable always. 



164 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

But how is it possible, at second hand, to uon- 
vey an idea of the pervading charm of a book 
whose very essence, hke its title, involves a para- 
dox — a book which forces us to find delight in the 
very things which on all logical grounds of tradi- 
tion and education and habit of thought should be 
expected to disappoint and repel us? Paragot is 
not merely a penniless wanderer, he is not merely 
out-at-elbow, but he has lost much of the rudimen- 
tary sense of decency. His hair is a stranger to the 
barber, his hands are often in need not only of 
manicuring, but of the more elementary attention 
of soap and water; his predilection for absinthe 
makes it a nightly problem whether he can find his 
way unaided to bed. Nothing less than a tour de 
force could make us not only overlook the short- 
comings of such a hero, but love him in spite of 
them — one might almost say love him the more on 
account of them. If he were different from what 
he is, he would cease to be the delightful, inim- 
itable, big-hearted Paragot, sharing his poverty 
with various stray waifs, male and female, that 
come his way; accepting contentedly the chance 
means of earning a meal that are offered from day 
to day, whether it be fiddling at a village wedding 
or weeding a market garden or aiding in the exca- 
vations of the Roman Forum. And while we follow 
him on his wanderings throughout the length and 
breadth of Europe, with his two companions — 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 165 

Asticot, the lad whom he adopts and who chronicles 
his life for us, and Blanquette de Veau, the phe- 
nomenally stupid and unattractive peasant girl, 
who gives him the dumb devotion of an animal — 
we lose sight of his failings and see him surrounded 
by a halo of kindliness and chivalry ; in the midst 
of his present sordidness we think of him in his 
youth, the eager, handsome lover of the woman he 
has lost, the woman with the petits pieds si adores. 
At first we hope vaguely that the shadow will lift, 
the mystery be cleared away, and Paragot be re- 
stored to his rights, his fortune, the woman he 
loves. But little by little, in proportion as it be- 
comes clearer that this transformation sooner or 
later is bound to take place, we grow apprehensive 
for his sake, because the truth is borne in upon us 
that the change will come too late — that he has 
grown too accustomed to his vagabondage, too out 
of touch with the conventions of life ever to find 
happiness apart from Bohemia, even with the one 
woman in the world. But our apprehension is mis- 
placed; for when the crisis arises there is just one 
course for a Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot to pur- 
sue, and Mr. Locke with unerring instinct has 
divined what that one thing would be. Nothing is 
better in the whole extent of this rare and delight- 
ful book than the unexpected and appropriate 
whimsicality of its climax. 

This brings us to Mr. Locke at the crossroads, 



166 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

with the alternative offered him of the commenda- 
tion of the few on the one hand or the applause of 
the multitude on the other. His first genuine suc- 
cess, the sterling success of approval, by men of 
his own class, by the aristocracy of letters, was 
The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. He knew better 
than to try to duplicate this success by anything 
short of an absolute contrast. Two books more 
dissimilar than Sir Marcus and The Beloved Vaga- 
bond it would be hard to imagine. But at this 
point Mr. Locke chose to change his policy and to 
try deliberately to work over an old idea, as long 
as it would give returns. As we have already seen, 
Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot is a vagabond and 
an exile, because he has taken upon his shoulders 
the sins of some one else, some one closely related 
to the woman he thought he loved, the woman with 
the petits pieds si adores. And having assumed 
this burden, he accepts with it all the consequences 
it entails ; the necessity of playing the part con- 
sistently before the eyes of the world, of cutting 
himself off from all the old associations that had 
formerly made up the joy of living; and, hardest 
of all, silently accepting the scorn of the woman 
who does not understand. And in the end, he 
awakens to a knowledge that all the weary months 
and years through which he has been mourning for 
his lost happiness, a better and finer and more gen- 
uine joy of life has been within easy arm's-length, 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 167 

waiting for him to reach out and take it. This, in 
brief, is the skeleton structure of The Beloved 
Vagabond. And, like most skeleton structures, it 
is of small value except for the flesh and blood 
that it serves to sustain. For what Berzelius Nib- 
bidard Paragot does is of infinitely less importance 
than what Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot is. His 
destiny is a diverting story, but his personality is 
an abiding j oy . 

Now, with no intention of being unfair, the re- 
viewer who attempts in like manner to epitomize 
Septimus finds himself compelled by truth to do it 
very much after this fashion ; to point out that 
Septimus Ajax Dix, if not quite a vagabond and 
exile, has at least cut himself off* from his old 
routine of life because he has taken upon his 
shoulders the sins of some one else, some one 
closely related to the woman he thinks he loves. 
And having assumed this burden, he accepts with 
it all the consequences it entails ; the necessity of 
playing his part consistently, before the eyes of 
the world, the necessity of cutting himself off^ 
from certain old associations that had once made 
up the joy of living; and hardest of all, silently 
bearing the wondering contempt of the woman for 
whom he has sacrificed himself, and who is in- 
capable of understanding. And in the end, he 
awakens to a knowledge that the weary months 
through which he has bravely played his part have 



168 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

really been a blessing in disguise because they have 
gradually been paving the way to a better and 
finer and more genuine joy of life that has all the 
time been within arm's-length, waiting only for 
him to reach out and take it. Somehow, there 
is a familiar ring about this. It almost sounds 
like a twice-told tale. Of course, to those who dis- 
sect plots with the elaborate care that a geologist 
gives to the bones of a pterodactyl, it may seem a 
vastly important point of difference that the sin- 
ful relative of the lady aux chers petit s pieds was 
her bankrupt father, while in the case of the 
woman whom Septimus Ajax Dix thought he loved 
it happened to be a frail and erring sister. But 
in either case, the articulation of the joints, the 
action of the story, moves along in quite the same 
fashion. The vital difference lies here: that in 
The Beloved Vagabond we have a group of charac- 
ters that refuse to be forgotten; Asticot, Blan- 
quette de Veau, the Vagabond himself, have taken 
their places among those permanent friends in 
the world of fiction without whom life would be just 
so much the poorer. But in Septimus, however 
much we may smile at the time, over whimsicalities 
of speech and action, there is not a character for 
whom we would feel a greater desire for another 
meeting than for the fellow-travelers whom we 
face for a brief ten minutes in a trolley car. Prob- 
ably if we did meet them, we should not be aware of 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 169 

it; but if ever we should meet Paragot, striding 
joyously along some rural by-way of France, 
even though he be no longer the Vagabond of old, 
but Paragot, the reformed Benedict, the landed 
proprietor, the father of a family, we should know 
him on the instant and joyously hail him by name. 

And in only slightly less measure this is also 
true of The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. Less 
human in its appeal, depending more upon little 
flashes of irony than on the whimsical tenderness 
that is Mr. Locke's most characteristic note, it 
nevertheless leaves an impression that abides. 
There is in it, more strongly than anywhere else, 
a certain flavor that is more Gallic than British, 
a sparkle that one must seek long to find in any 
other English novelist of to-day. It bears well 
the test of a second reading; not so well, to be 
sure, as The Belorsed Vagabond, but certainly 
much better than such volumes as A White Dove, 
Idols and Derelicts, — and emphatically better 
than Septimus. 

And the reason? Well, no one, not even the 
author himself, can explain why one book has in 
it the spark of genius and another has not. But 
this at least can be said without fear of contra- 
diction: that Septimus is curiously well adapted 
to the purposes of a popular serial, and that 
none of Mr. Locke's earlier volumes would have 
been nearly so well suited to this purpose. And 



170 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

secondly, that if, for the sake of argument, we 
should assume that Mr. Locke had set himself to 
study over all of his other books ; to select from 
them such incidents and situations, such epi- 
grams and paradoxes as had apparently caught 
the popular vote; and then with deliberate in- 
tention had built up a story that should embody 
all of these popular qualities, we might have ex- 
pected the resulting volume to be something not 
greatly unlike Septimus. Not that Septimus is 
undesei-ving of its popularity. On the contrary, 
it is exactly the sort of book of which the crowd — 
Mr. Ruskin's crowd — might be expected to 
approve. 

For the reasons above given there was good 
reason to fear, on the evidence offered by Septi- 
mus, that the peculiar vein of Mr. Locke's humor 
was in danger of running out. Simon the Jester, 
although by no means a book of importance, was 
in a measure reassuring. And after all, when 
one realizes the nature of Mr. Locke's literary 
formula, it follows naturally that so long as 
human nature exists there is no possibility of his 
particular vein ever running dry. To word 
it crudely, his trick seems to be to take life as 
it is and then wilfully turn it topsy-turvy. He 
peoples his mimic world with bizarre characters 
verging on the grotesque, and then suddenly sur- 
prises us by a sense of their kinship — the sheer 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 171 

inborn humanity of them. " What do people 
usually do, what do people usually think ? " He 
seems all the time to be saying: "Well, my peo- 
ple are going to do and to think not thus but far 
otherwise. They shall do impossible, illogical 
things ; they shall amaze and shock and irritate — 
and nevertheless you shall love them in spite of 
yourself, because in them you shall see the reflex 
of your own hopes and fears ; your own strivings 
and failures." 

It would be venturesome to profess to analyze 
the birth and origin of Simon the Jester. But 
let us suppose, by way of illustration, that Mr. 
Locke, in an idle hour, had been re-reading Pen- 
dennisy that he had relished once again those won- 
derful chapters recording the good Major's 
manoeuvers to rescue Pen from the wiles of Emily 
Costigan. Supposing, as he closed the book, that 
his inborn streak of perversity had flashed across 
his mind the question, what would have happened 
if the Major, after rescuing Pen, had himself 
fallen victim to the charms of the Fotheringay? 
Of course, the analogy must not be forced too far. 
There is not one note in common between Mr. 
Locke's group of characters and those of Thack- 
eray, because his mind worked along an entirely 
diff^erent groove. But the comparison serves to 
illustrate his characteristic way of turning the 
ordinary situations of life upside-down. Substi- 



112 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

tute for the punctilious and dignified Major a 
man whom fate has picked out as a victim of its 
grimmest humor — a man snatched from a proud 
eminence of statesmanship and confronted with 
the fact that a painful malady gives him less than 
six months of remaining life. Substitute for the 
placid and rather bovine Emily a wonderful, mag- 
netic creature of slumbrous fire ; a famous trainer 
and exhibitor of wild beasts, with the lithe grace 
of a panther in all her movements, and the yellow 
glow of a cat's eyes in her glance. Substitute for 
little Bows the equally devoted and far more gro- 
tesque figure of a Greek dwarf rejoicing in the 
name of Anastasius Papadopoulos, with his com- 
pany of trained cats, his extraordinary jargon of 
modern languages and his homicidal mania, riot- 
ing through the book like a figure taken straight 
out of an Offenbach libretto — and you have a fair 
idea of the structure and material of Simon the 
Jester. 

To turn from the relative mediocrity of these 
last two volumes to The Glory of Clementina, 
which followed them rather closely in point of 
of time, is to experience a genuine and unexpected 
pleasure — and also to feel the comforting assur- 
ance that, even if Mr. Locke's talent has in a meas- 
ure been commercialized, he has his hours of inde^ 
pendence. Despite its title. The Glory of Clem- 
entina is quite as much the story of a man as of a 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 173 

woman; and both the man and the woman have 
reached that point in Hfe which thoughtless young 
people are apt to regard as middle age, but which 
nevertheless still has many of the best years ahead 
of it. The man is in certain respects a twentieth 
century Job — the credit of this comparison is due, 
not to the reviewer, but to Mr. Locke himself — 
like Job, he has always prospered abundantly ; the 
good things of life have come to him without effort, 
and no disappointment or deception has ever 
shaken his child-like faith in the fundamental kind- 
liness and honesty of his fellow-men. At the open- 
ing of the story he is a widower of some years' 
standing and the nominal senior partner in an 
old and highly respected law firm, the practical 
management of which he has for years entrusted 
to the junior member of the firm. His own time 
is pleasantly filled in with archeological pur- 
suits ; and a newly received case of flint arrow- 
heads or some fragments of a cave-dweller's skull 
afford him the keenest enjoyment that his placid 
life has known. All of a sudden, as in the case 
of Job, the even tenor of his life is interrupted. 
His junior partner absconds, leaving a mountain 
of debts, a stain of dishonor upon the old firm 
name, and an unpleasant question whether he him- 
self has not been guilty of criminal negligence. 
The ungentle treatment that he receives in the 
course of the inevitable prosecution that follows, 



174 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

the caustic personalities indulged in by the public 
press, the cold reception that he meets from for- 
mer friends, all play their part in undermining his 
faith in human nature; and when, close upon the 
heels of these misfortunes, there comes, first, the 
news that a rich old uncle had disinherited him; 
and, secondly, the discovery of a letter which con- 
vinces him of the faithlessness of the dead wife 
around whose memory he has built a sort of shrine, 
the critical point is reached, and a series of explo- 
sions of considerable violence are bound to fol- 
low. On the other hand, we have in Clementina 
a woman whose illusions all died in early youth. 
She has gone through the years which followed, 
with no expectation of happiness, no belief that 
the world has anything in store for her, excepting 
such material gain as she can wrest from it with 
the work of her own hands. By profession she is 
a portrait painter, and is already recognized as 
one of the most able and most popular artists in 
all London. She can command her own price; 
she has means to live where and how she pleases, 
to robe herself regally, to be an important factor 
in the social world. But she chooses, instead, to 
remain in her old Bohemian surroundings, to wear 
shabby, out-of-date clothes, to twist her hair into 
any sort of a coil that will take the least possible 
trouble, and altogether allow herself to grow old 
before her time. These two human beings, the 



WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 175 

man in whom pessimism is a newborn and abnormal 
trait, and the woman who for half her life has not 
known what it is to trust her fellow-men, are 
thrown together by Mr. Locke, through a series of 
characteristically whimsical associations, skilfully 
calculated to bring to the surface whatever latent 
tenderness may still be lurking in each of them; 
and any one familiar with Mr. Locke's methods 
may make a fairly accurate guess as to the final 
outcome. One cannot, however, resist the impulse 
to add just this one last word: namely, that al- 
though many another writer has depicted the re- 
juvenating power of love, no one has ever done it 
in a bolder or more brilliantly spectacular man- 
ner than that of Mr. Locke, in the chapter show- 
ing us Clementina in all her glory, presiding at a 
banquet especially designed to enhance her own 
charms and throw her one and only rival everlast- 
ingly into the shade. 

This is a propitious moment at which to take 
temporary leave of Mr. Locke. With Septirrms 
he came to the parting of the ways, and quite ob- 
viously took the wrong turning. It looks now as 
though he had discovered his mistake in time and 
had made haste to retrace his steps and get his feet 
once more planted firmly on his one sure path. 
An indulgent irony, a kindly and sympathetic un- 
derstanding of the foibles and follies of his 
brother men and sister women is the underlying 



176 WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

note of all his books, the best and the worst alike. 
" When the soul laughs, tears come into the eyes," 
says Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot; and it is with 
this same paradoxical mingling of emotions, with 
a mist before the eyes and laughter in the soul, 
that one reads the best pages of William John 
Locke. 




JOHN GALSWORTHY 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 

Thie obvious facts about Mr. John Galsworthy's 
position in literature at the present hour may be 
briefly summed up as follows: He is still, com- 
paratively speaking, a young man, being yet in 
the early forties ; he has produced six novels and a 
couple of volumes of brief sketches which have 
received much discriminating praise, and little, if 
any, serious censure; he has produced several 
plays which have met with cordial approval on 
both sides of the Atlantic ; and he has been hailed 
in England as one of the foremost apostles of the 
new school of fiction. It is interesting to inquire 
to what extent this flatteringly high valuation is 
deserved. 

There are almost as many ways of measuring 
the worth of a novel as there are critics. Yet, 
whatever standard of criticism we may adopt, the 
fact remains that at least three factors are essen- 
tial to the production of fiction: First, the au- 
thor's ability to see life as it is ; secondly, his pos- 
session of certain definite ideas about what he 
sees ; and lastly, a mastery of the technique requi- 
site to convert these ideas into a piece of finished 

177 



178 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

artistry. In other words, the importance of any 
novelist may be fairly well determined by inquiring 
as to his methods, his material and his philosophy 
of life. Let us consider these three questions in 
their relation to Mr. Galsworthy. 

In the first place, it may be conceded that the 
author of Fraternity has come to be a craftsman 
of high order. His work, even that of his earlier 
period in which the apprentice touch is still per- 
ceptible, conveys an impression of unity, of ab- 
solute singleness of purpose and of mood. He 
seems to have known by instinct, from the begin- 
ning, certain principles of good construction 
which many another novelist of importance has 
acquired slowly and gropingly, or perhaps has 
never acquired at all. He has an admirable 
sense of proportion; he never wastes time or 
spac^ on minor characters or unessential descrip- 
tions. He possesses, beyond any other English 
novelist of the younger generation, that invaluable 
gift of making every little detail of character, 
every separate brush-stroke of his minutely care- 
ful backgrounds convey something essential to our 
comprehension of his story as a whole. As an 
observant critic recently pointed out in the West- 
minster Review, Mr. Galsworthy shares with Dick- 
ens a tendency to personify inanimate objects, to 
describe, for instance, the physiognomy of a house, 
as though it were possessed of human features — 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 179 

but with this vital difference, that Dickens care- 
lessly threw off such descriptions through a 
whimsical love of them for their own sake, while 
behind the similar passages in Mr. Galsworthy's 
writings there always lies a definite purpose, the 
purpose of showing how man and his environment 
react upon each other — how, for instance, the 
personality of a certain house reveals in a curi- 
ously intimate way the character of its occupants. 
Furthermore, Mr. Galsworthy started, not only 
with a certain intuitive knowledge of technique, 
but with what is still more valuable, an unusual 
power of self-criticism. His published volumes, 
taken in chronological order, disclose most sig- 
nificantly his aptitude for learning, his ability to 
see the weak points in his structure and to avoid 
them in subsequent productions. Considered 
purely from the point of technique, each novel 
shows a successive forward stride, a realization 
that such-and-such an error must not be commit- 
ted again. Villa Rubein, published as early as 
1900, is in this connection a negligible quantity; 
it is a pleasant little story of a love match which 
arouses family opposition because the man in 
question is not merely a struggling painter, but 
something of an anarchist besides. The handling 
of the plot is adequate enough, considered as a 
first attempt; yet the book contains scarcely a 
hint of the really big and serious work which was 



180 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

to come later from the same hand. The Island 
Pharisees, which followed after an interval of 
four years, brought Mr. Galsworthy for the first 
time into prominence and revealed his character- 
istic outlook upon life. As is generally admitted, 
it is, in point of construction, the weakest of all 
his stories, the one with the thinnest plot. It is 
merely the chronicle of the experiences of a man 
who, because he has grown disgusted with the 
smug self-complacency of the particular social 
environment to which he was born, tries to escape 
from it, and to this end moves successively through 
the various other social circles of modern British 
life ; and everywhere, in the higher strata, equally 
with the lower, he encounters practically the same 
smugness, the same Pharisaical thanking of God. 
With all its structural weakness, The Island 
Pharisees was a book that loomed up rather large 
above the average shallowness of current fiction. 
Yet Mr. Galsworthy learned from it the profitable 
lesson that a picaresque string of episodes, with 
a constant procession of new scenes and new peo- 
ple, even when bound together by an unmistakable 
singleness of purpose, falls short of the higher 
standard of good construction. At all events, in 
his following volume, The Man of Property, he 
once and for all abandoned the picaresque method. 
In spite of a certain rather formidable bulkiness 
and an almost too obtrusive purpose, The Man 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 181 

of Froperty is a strong candidate for first place 
among Mr. Galsworthy's published novels. At 
least, it is the one which most persistently refuses 
to be forgotten, and for that reason demands a 
somewhat extended consideration when we come 
to take up his separate volumes. It is the chroni- 
cle of an English family of the stolid upper mid- 
dle class, a family whose numerous ramifications 
leave the reader almost dizzy with their com- 
plexity. It is as though Zola's Rougon-Macquart 
cycle were condensed within the limits of a single 
volume. No one can say that the task is not skil- 
fully performed ; the intricate interlacings and 
crossings of all these varied family interests are as 
elaborately and as finely patterned as a piece of 
hand-made lace — but, like fine lace, they need the 
eye of a connoisseur to appreciate them. We all 
know that in certain books, as in real life, it is im- 
possible to see the woods because of the trees ; but 
it does not help us to see clearly, if an author 
takes, as Mr. Galsworthy has done, just one single 
family tree, and then envelops us in the impene- 
trable tangle of its prolific leafage. The Man of 
Property taught Mr. Galsworthy two important 
truths : first, that economy of means demands that 
a novelist shall strive for a maximum of effect 
with a minimum of characters ; and secondly, that 
however keenly and vitally a novelist may be in- 
terested in the doctrine that he advocates, he must 



182 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

not let it become more important to him than his 
art, or he will inevitably tend more and more 
towards writing sermons, instead of novels. 

The Country House, which is admittedly the 
most generally popular of all Mr. Galsworthy's 
novels, represents his first attempt at strictly 
economical construction, his first rigorous elimi- 
nation of all incidents and characters not structur- 
ally essential. It is a human drama concerning 
just one small group of men and women, yet in- 
volving principles of wide ethical import; the 
stage setting is limited for the most part to the 
happenings within the house and grounds of one 
county family; while the actual duration of time 
in which the action takes place shows a similar 
praiseworthy self-restraint. Having tested his 
strength in the matter of close construction on a 
comparatively modest theme — for The Country 
House is essentially of lesser magnitude than its 
predecessors — he now felt himself ready to at- 
tempt what still remains his most ambitious effort. 
Fraternity. Here is a book with a world-wide 
theme, the Brotherhood of Man ; all London, with 
its social pageantry, its jostling throngs, its teem- 
ing, reeking slums, is mirrored back with an effect 
of motley, crowded human life, a sense of sheer 
weight of numbers, of humanity in the bulk, such 
as very few other novelists have succeeded in giv- 
ing within similar limits. For, when you analyze 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 183 

it, this huge epic drama of modern British Hfe re- 
solves itself down to just fourteen characters 
with what we may call speaking parts. It fur- 
nishes an example of economy of construction 
that closely approaches a sort of literary leger- 
demain. 

Passing over, for the moment. The Patrician, 
which offers nothing salient in point of construc- 
tion, we may take up the second of our three ques- 
tions, namely, the nature of Mr. Galsworth's ma- 
terial. In spite of his breadth of outlook upon life, 
the substance of Mr. Galworthy's novels offers a 
rather surprising sameness. The keynote first 
struck in The Island Pharisees, is the keynote of 
each successive volume. British stolidity, British 
insularity, British conservatism, the unvarying 
fixity of the social system, the sacrifice of indi- 
vidual needs and cravings to caste and precedent 
and public opinion; these are the themes which 
Mr. Galsworthy never wearies of satirizing with a 
mordant irony. Usually, it is the solid upper mid- 
dle class, the class that represents property, vested 
interests, capital gained in trade or in clever specu- 
lation in land. If The Man of Property were as 
good a piece of work technically as it is ethically, 
it would easily stand at the head of its author's 
achievement. Nowhere else has he given us, with 
such sustained and sardonic irony, a picture of 
the monumental complacency of the man of money, 



184. JOHN GALSWORTHY 

blindly believing in his own supreme importance, 
living in a narrow little world of his own making, 
and unaware that there is anything higher in life 
than the treadmill of his own daily routine, the 
sum of his yearly dividends, the quality and vin- 
tage of his nightly bottle. The Man of Property 
is one of those complex, crowded books that cannot 
be mentally assimilated at the first reading. Al- 
though this is in a measure a fault, tending to 
limit Mr. Galsworthy's audience, yet there is a 
certain sophisticated enjoyment in the cumulative 
effect of a second reading, the discovery of little 
subtleties previously overlooked, mannerisms of 
phrase and action which it is impossible to forget. 
When the volume first appeared, at least one en- 
thusiastic reviewer compared the pleasure he de- 
rived from it to that of tasting rare and priceless 
wine — and the praise was justified, both in its 
generosity and in the implied limitation that, in 
order to appreciate the volume, one must have 
the trained palate of the literary connoisseur. To 
many readers it gives an impression of dullness ; a 
conscious effort is required to keep in mind the 
many brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncles 
and cousins who make up the doughty clan of 
Forsytes — for, with just one exception, the 
scheme of the book admits of no interloper from 
outside the immediate family connections. Un- 
deniably this in itself is an achievement of some 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 185 

magnitude — this faithful portraiture of an entire 
family group, so vividly and minutely differen- 
tiated that we are conscious, at one and the same 
time, of the strong family likeness and the equally 
strong, one is tempted to say aggressive, individu- 
ality of every one of its score or more members. 
But Mr. Galsworthy is doing something a good 
deal bigger than painting family portraits. That 
the Forsytes, as the name implies, are symbolic of 
the great conservative class in England, would be 
self-evident, even if the author had not taken the 
pains, through the lips of one of his characters, 
Young Jolyon, to tell us quite precisely what a 
Forsyte stands for. Young Jolyon, the one black 
sheep of the family, the one who has belied the tra- 
ditions of his house, by deserting his wife and 
child and disappearing from social circles in com- 
pany with a young woman of no importance, save 
for the fact that he happened to love her and she 
him — Young Jolyon, in after years, chances to 
meet Bosinney, the gifted but penniless interloper 
whom June Forsyte, Young Jolyon's daughter, is 
soon to marry. The conversation turns, not un- 
naturally, upon the peculiarities of the family 
which Bosinney is about to enter: 

** You talk about them/' said Bosinney, " as if they 
were half England." 

" They are," retorted Young Jolyon, " half Eng- 



180 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

land, and the better half, too, the safe half, the three 
per cent, half, the half that counts. It's their wealth 
and security that makes everything possible; makes 
your art possible, makes literature, science, even reli- 
gion, possible. Without Forsytes, vrho believe in none 
of these things, but turn them all to use, where should 
we be ? My dear sir, the Forsytes are the middlemen, 
the commercials, the pillars of society, the cornerstones 
of convention, everything that is admirable ! " 

" I don't know whether I catch your drift," said 
Bosinney, " but I fancy there are plenty of Forsytes, 
as you call them, in my profession." 

*' Certainly," replied Young Jolyon, " the great 
majority of architects, painters or writers have no 
principles, like any other Forsytes. Art, literature, 
religion, survive by virtue of the few cranks who 
really believe in such things, and the many Forsytes 
who make a commercial use of them. At a low esti- 
mate, three-fourths of our Royal Academicians are 
Forsytes, seven-eighths of our novelists, a large pro- 
portion of our press. Of science I won't speak. 
They are magnificently represented in religion; in 
the House of Commons perhaps more numerous than 
anywhere; the aristocracy speaks for itself. But I 
am not laughing: it is dangerous to go against a ma- 
jority, — and what a majority! " 

Such, in Mr. Galsworthy's own phrasing, is the 
symb'olic meaning underlying the specific story of 
Soames Forsyte, the Man of Property. Young 
Jolyon is not laughing, neither is Mr. Galsworthy 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 187 

— he is simply setting forth existing conditions as 
he sees them, underscoring them here and there 
a little grimly, yet, like the conscientious realist 
that he is, leaving us to make what we will of 
them. But whatever we do make of them — 
whether we think them the backbone of society or 
the chief drag upon the world's advance — he is 
right in holding that there is no room for laughter. 
They are too formidable. With their cumulative 
weight of safe investments, their impregnable bul- 
warks of landed property, they stand as exponents 
of the great physical law of inertia, the force that 
maintains the established order. Mr. Gals- 
worthy's specific story concerns a crisis in the 
House of Forsyte which shook its defenses but 
failed to break them down. In the opening 
chapter, we witness one of its rare family reunions, 
such as mark the solemn occasions of birth, mar- 
riage and death — for the Forsytes, while show- 
ing a solid phalanx against the world at large, are 
individually too self-centered, too fixed in their own 
narrow orbits, to herd together without serious 
motives. The purpose of the gathering in ques- 
tion is to ratify, although grudgingly, June For- 
syte's revolutionary act of engaging herself to an 
impecunious, Bohemian architect, a " half-tamed 
leopard," who is either ignorant or disdainful of 
the smaller social conventions, and has actually 
been guilty of paying a formal call upon June's 



188 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

maiden aunts arrayed in a strange, outlandish 
slouch hat, redolent of the Latin Quarter. The 
way in which this interloper reacts upon the clan 
of Forsytes, who receive him with what grace they 
can muster, is in itself good comedy, of the sort, 
one likes to think, that might have won from the 
author of Vanity Fair the indulgent approval of a 
kindred spirit. 

But the structural importance of this open- 
ing scene is that it introduces Bosinney the 
Bohemian to Soames Forsyte the Man of Prop- 
erty and to his beautiful and secretly disillusioned 
wife, Irene. In his stolid security of possession, 
Soames has not a glimmer of suspicion of his wife's 
growing physical aversion. Having at last, on 
the threshold of middle age, found a woman whom 
he wished to marry, he has won her, just as 
throughout his life he has always won the things he 
coveted, by slow, indomitable persistence. And, 
after acquisition, it never once occurs to his monu- 
mental self-complacence that her love has not 
necessarily been included in the bargain. Up to 
the meeting with Bosinney, his rights of possession 
have suffered no encroachment. But shortly after- 
wards, Soames makes a series of miscalculations, 
due to the fact that he is dealing with tempera- 
mental people, devoid of a fitting reverence for 
property. He sees vaguely that something is 
wrong with Irene; he thinks that she needs a 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 189 

change of scene and a new interest in life. A 
country house and the novelty of planning and 
building it seem to offer the required solution. 
Furthermore, it will give Bosinney just the open- 
ing that he needs, it will launch him upon a mount- 
ing tide of prosperity; it will please June, of 
whom he is really fond, it will allow him to pose 
as a benefactor, a patron of art — and, inciden- 
tally, he expects to get Bosinney's services at bar- 
gain rates in return for his condescension in em- 
ploying him. 

But matters work out far otherwise. Bos- 
inney, instead of being grateful, seems to think 
that it is he who is bestowing a favor ; he refuses to 
brook any interference, the cost of the new house 
augments day by day, and the result is, not an 
open breach, a manly agreement to disagree and 
end the contract, but a series of petty bickerings 
and temporary truces. And all the while, June 
sees her lover slowly slipping from her, and Bos- 
inney and Irene find themselves gliding downgrade 
at a momentum that has escaped their control. 
Then comes the day when Soames's tardy jealousy 
is awakened, and he retaliates in a way eminently 
characteristic of a Man of Property: he sues 
Bosinney for breach of contract for having ex- 
ceeded the specified estimates. What follows 
close upon this act of retaliation is too frank, too 
audacious, too poignantly cruel to be openly dis- 



190 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

cussed, outside of a legal treatise upon the marital 
relations. Even Mr. Galsworthy's carefully veiled 
exposition of Soames's brief hour of madness 
touches the limit of what is permissible in fiction. 
Nevertheless, as the final word on that survival of 
feudalism, the Englishman's claim of property 
rights over his own wife, her possessions, her lib- 
erty, her person, the chapter in question is unas- 
sailable ; it is structurally perfect, like that of the 
analogous scene in Maupassant's Une Vie, — with 
this big difference in favor of Mr. Galsworthy, 
that he gets full structural value out of the epi- 
sode, and Maupassant did not. Certain reviewers 
curiously misunderstood the concluding chapters, 
and gravely explained that Bosinney, learning 
that Soames Forsyte's suit against him has re- 
sulted in a verdict that will leave him bankrupt, 
deliberately commits suicide by walking in front 
of an omnibus during a London fog, in spite of the 
fact that he knows Irene has left her husband 
and is awaiting him at his chambers. The key- 
note to the real ending lies in the words with 
which Soames tries to silence his clamorous sense 
of shame, that "women never tell that sort of 
thing." But in the next chapter we catch a 
glimpse of Irene in what is destined to be her 
last interview on earth with Bosinney; later we 
see him striding blindly through the fog, con- 
sumed with impotent anger and dreams of venge- 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 191 

ance — and then in the final picture, we see a 
broken, miserable woman, who has crept back to 
her husband's hearthstone, too numb with grief 
from the news flung at her from newspaper head- 
lines, to care what fate the future holds for her. 
And we leave them together, the husband and wife, 
the owner and his chattel — and for the first time 
in his life, Soames Forsyte has become conscious 
of the futility and the emptiness of such owner- 
ship. He has defended his own, according to his 
lights, and he has wrought nothing but devas- 
tation. 

In its narrowest sense the central situation of 
A Man of Property is one of the commonplaces of 
fiction: a woman with too much temperament in 
bondage to the wrong man. The same is true of 
The Country House, with this difference, that the 
husband of the latter novel is a man of coarse na- 
ture and dissolute habits. Then comes the inevita- 
ble Other Man, sympathetic friendship drifting 
steadily along the course of danger ; then the fore- 
seen catastrophe, and the impending divorce. One 
of the most hopeful things about Mr. Galsworthy, 
however, is that he realizes that what happens, 
in fact or in fiction, does not matter half so much 
as the way in which people accept it — that there 
may, perhaps, be literally nothing new under the 
sun in the way of concrete facts, but that in the 
reaction of these facts upon the minds of men and 



192 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

women there is something perennially new. If the 
story of George Pendyce and Helen Bellew were 
the only interest or even the central interest of 
The Country House, there would have been small 
purpose in writing it and even less purpose in dis- 
cussing it. But what Mr. Galsworthy has done 
is to use this episode of human frailty much as a 
scientist uses a germ culture, to study its effects 
upon others. The central interest is the little 
world of English country life, within a few miles' 
radius of the village of Worsted Skeynes, and 
more especially the world which centers in the 
ancient and honorable house of Pendyce. It is 
a wonderfully vivid and detailed picture of stolid 
and complacent British conservatism, a consist- 
ent worship of the God of Things as They Are. 
Mr. Horace Pendyce, the present head of the 
house, is shown to us as a man whose daily prayer 
is, " Make me such a man as my father was be- 
fore me, and make my son after me such a man as I 
am to-day." But it happens that his eldest son 
George is not in the least such a man as his father, 
or he never could have so far forgotten his duty 
to the traditional honor of the name of Pendyce 
as to bring upon it the stain of a divorce suit. 
The episode of George's love for Helen Bellew is 
sketched in between the lines, as it were, in some- 
thing of the indirect, intangible fashion that Mr. 
James adopted for showing us Chad Newsome's 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 193 

similar experience in The Ambassadors. Mr. 
Galsworthy has a trick of saying a great deal 
very much to the point in just one illuminating 
phrase, as where he makes another woman define 
Helen Bellew as " one of those women you never 
can look at without seeing that she has a — a — 
body." You catch fugitive glimpses of the lovers, 
now in the gloom of a conservatory, now in the 
tawdry seclusion of some isolated restaurant ; but 
even these glimpses are not direct, they are re- 
flected through the eyes of some third person, the 
horrified gaze of the rector of Worsted Skeynes, or 
the obsequious glance of the cross-eyed, consump- 
tive waiter as he "lays her cloak upon her with 
adoring hands." But what we do see, in the full, 
clear light of day, is the consternation that over- 
spreads the world of Worsted Skeynes ; the disar- 
rangement of an intricate and delicately adjusted 
social order ; the break in a family tradition ; the 
wrong done by the future master of Worsted 
Skeynes, not to the woman, not to himself, but 
to the name he bears. That is the point of view 
upon which Mr. Galsworthy turns the full, white 
light of his vigorous style. The one thing that 
the elder Pendyce fears more than all else at this 
juncture is that " George may stand by her," 
may even want eventually to marry her, and thus 
bring an evil strain into the future generations of 
Pendyce. But, like so many situations in real 



194j JOHN GALSWORTHY 

life, matters adjust themselves quite simply and a 
great deal of anxiety has been expended for noth- 
ing. The lady wearies of the attachment, the 
divorce proceedings are dropped, the dignity of 
the house of Pendyce is saved, and behind it all 
we perceive Mr. Galsworthy's ironic smile at the 
injustice and the follies of the Social Fabric. 

Fraternity, which comes next in chronological 
order, is in more respects than one a distinct ad- 
vance upon its author's earlier work. It lacks, 
to be sure, something of that delightful aggres- 
siveness which one divines behind the satiric pose 
in The Man of Property; it suggests that, if Mr. 
Galsworthy's pulse has not grown calmer, he has 
gained in self-restraint. Be this as it may, Frater- 
nity still stands, both in method and in theme, the 
most ambitious, the most serious, the most wide- 
reaching of all his novels. In the London of to- 
day it asks the world-old question, " Am I my 
brother's keeper ? " It takes up and develops 
with an epic breadth of treatment the whole range 
of human responsibility, the whole mooted prob- 
lem of "Who is my neighbor?" And it does all 
this, not in the broad, flamboyant, Zolaesque man- 
ner, but with a surprising economy of means in 
stage-setting as well as in cast of characters. You 
are made to feel that you have been looking out 
over an immeasurable expanse of life and survey- 
ing humanity in the mass through all the infinite 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 195 

gradations of social strata. Yet when you stop 
to consider, you realize that the whole story has 
been limited to practically fourteen characters, 
the whole range of scene to the interiors of two or 
three English dwellings. In fact, the extreme 
nicety of the technique, the rare art with which 
the art is concealed, justifies a rather careful an- 
alysis of the structure. The characters fall into 
two groups : On the one hand, seven characters 
who live in a sordid London tenement and typify 
the " submerged tenth " ; on the other hand, a 
second seven, a family of charming, highly culti- 
vated people representing what Mr. Galsworthy 
has somewhere in the book (if I do not misquote 
him) called the " emerged fiftieth." The second 
seven consists of two brothers, Hilary and Stephen 
Dallison ; their wives, Bianca and Cecilia, who hap- 
pen to be sisters; the father of these two women, 
Sylvanus Stone, a fine, visionary, symbolic figure, 
but of unbalanced mind — one whom an earlier age 
might have worshiped as a prophet, but whom 
practical modernity frankly recognizes as half- 
witted; and lastly, two other young persons, 
Stephen's daughter. Thyme, and a young physi- 
cian, Martin, whose special hobby is relief of the 
poor through improved sanitation. It would be 
easy to spend many pages over the careful sym- 
bolism in this group of seven. No two brothers 
were ever more unlike than Hilary and Stephen; 



196 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

no two sisters ever had less in common than 
Bianca and Cecilia. Plainly Mr. Galsworthy 
would have us understand that brotherhood, the 
sort of brotherhood he has in mind, has little to do 
with consanguinity. And yet he does not expect 
the world to accept the wider fraternity that his 
title preaches ; for the character who serves as 
mouthpiece to proclaim a doctrine of universal 
brotherhood, and who pictures with impressive and 
lyric mysticism the sordidness and self-seeking of 
modern life, is Sylvanus Stone, the frail and 
broken old man whom the world has long since 
rejected and labeled imbecile. The other seven 
characters, representing the " submerged tenth," 
include an artist's model of the name of Barton; 
a married couple named Hughes, the wife a seam- 
stress, the husband a street sweeper ; a newspaper 
vendor, Creed, who, in better days, was a butler in 
a family of social consequence ; and certain other 
inmates of the same tenement whose names are not 
material in a brief epitome of the story. Now it 
happens that Hilarj^'s wife, Bianca, has artistic 
aspirations, and in the little model she finds pre- 
cisely the type she needs for an ambitious symbolic 
figure, to be called " The Shadow." It happens, 
further, that Hilary, unlike the majority of his 
class, sees in this poor girl not merely a 
model, but a human being — a half-starved, deso- 
late little waif, whom he cannot bear to allow to 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 197 

drift awaj, without a proffer of help. But he 
learns a little too late that because the world is 
what it is, he is not quite a free agent in the be- 
stowal of charities ; he cannot give this girl even 
the most perfunctory sort of help without setting 
in motion a long chain of catastrophes, such as 
would be impossible in the world of mad Sylvanus 
Stone's dreams — the world of universal brother- 
hood. We are all galley-slaves to convention, 
Mr. Galsworthy seems to say ; we are so bound 
and hedged in by our self-made limitations that 
we cannot break the established routine to help 
Peter without robbing Paul ; we cannot, nine-tenths 
of the time, obey the social edicts of our world, 
and then for one-tenth disregard them, that good 
may come of it. Hilary's interest in the girl is 
quite harmless ; biit, on the one side his wife is 
jealous, and there are plenty of friends to gossip 
and sneer and believe the worst — and for a long 
time there has been in his marriage one of those 
little rifts that lead to discord. On the other 
hand, there are plenty of people in the girl's own 
class ready to misconstrue Hilary's motives ; 
among others, Hughes, the street cleaner, who has 
already persecuted the girl with offensive atten- 
tions. And because Hughes's jealousy drives him 
into a drunken rage, he attempts one day to kill 
his overworked drudge of a wife, is sentenced to a 
month in jail, and through his absence is indi- 



198 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

rectlj responsible for the death of his youngest 
child. Now, because old Creed, the newspaper 
vendor, was once a butler, he still belongs by in- 
stinct and sympathies to a higher class than that 
into which he has drifted ; so, when he learns that 
Hughes, the street sweeper, has planned, as soon 
as he is free from jail, to take vengeance on 
Hilary, Creed goes to warn the latter that the 
little model, who has meanwhile become the secre- 
tary of the fanatical Sylvanus Stone, must be sent 
away where Hilary will not see her any more. 
And to this Hilary gives his consent, not because 
he is afraid of Hughes, but because his wife, 
Bianca, believes she has grounds for jealousy — 
also, we are allowed to infer, because Hilary does 
not wholly trust himself. This, in brief, is the 
central pattern of a complex story woven out of 
many threads, showing what a train of disasters 
may be set in motion because a kind-hearted man 
chooses to buy shoes, stockings and a new frock 
for a forlorn and shivering girl ; and the perma- 
nent estrangement of this man and his wife puts 
the last touch of mordant irony to this strong and 
earnest volume. And behind the individual trag- 
edies of the story, the prophetic note of the half- 
crazed fanatic, Sylvanus Stone, sounds insistently 
as a leitmotiv, pointing out with the unfailing 
optimism of a fixed idea the joys of the millennium 
which is to come when the existing order of things 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 199 

shall have passed away. This fine old symbolic 
character lives wholly in a dream future; the 
present is to him always a part of the past; he 
habitually refers to it as " In those days." Here, 
for instance, is a characteristic utterance: 

" They have been speaking to me of an execution. 
To take life was the chief mark of the insensate bar- 
barism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from 
that most irreligious fetish_, the belief in the perma- 
nence of the individual ego after death. From the 
worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of 
the human race. They did not stop to love each other 
in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity 
to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable 
men to act like dogs with clear consciences." 

In short, both by implication and directly 
through his mouthpiece, Sylvanus Stone, Mr. 
Galsworthy seems to be saying, with all the force 
that there is in him, that Fraternity, in the 
broader and higher sense, is even yet the vision of 
an unbalanced brain, and that in this respect so- 
ciety to-day has advanced but little beyond the 
Cain-and-Abel conception of Brotherhood. 

It does not fall within the scope of the present 
article to examine the dramatic work of Mr. Gals- 
worthy. Unquestionably, he has tried some in- 
teresting experiments in that particular division 
of literature, and has succeeded in gaining for his 
cherished ideas a wider and more direct hearing 



200 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

than he can expect for his books. It may be that 
he will tend more and more to choose the drama 
as his vehicle of expression, and that books of 
the magnitude, the crowded vitality, the super- 
abundant suggestiveness of A Man of Property 
and Fraternity are destined to stand for a long 
time isolated on the library shelf. Aside from his 
plays, Mr. Galsworthy has produced nothing for 
the past three years save one novel, The Patrician^ 
for which no better summing-up could be found 
than the familiar Tennysonian line, " icily regular, 
splendidly null," and a collection of sketches so 
fragile that one hesitates to dignify them with 
the name of short stories. A Motley is the title 
which he has chosen to designate what is really 
nothing more nor less than a verbal sketch book, 
wherein he has drawn with swift, sure strokes all 
sorts of fugitive impressions made by people and 
things glimpsed briefly during his daily comings 
and goings. At one moment, it is an unforgettable 
portrait of an aged crossing sweeper, twisted and 
bowed with pain, whose indomitable pride alone 
keeps him from the almshouse. Again, it is a sub- 
tle presentment of a furtive rendezvous at an out- 
of-door restaurant in Kensington Gardens — a ren- 
dezvous that would have meant nothing to the ordi- 
nary spectator, but from which Mr. Galsworthy's 
keener eye interprets an abundance of the philos- 
ophy of life. And still again, there is the flash- 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 201 

light picture that he gives us of a young French 
marine, seen for an hour in a railway carriage on 
his way to join his ship, under orders to sail for 
China. His father is dead, his mother is penni- 
less ; and he himself, racked with a stubborn cough, 
foresees dumbly that he is destined never to come 
back alive from that deadly Chinese coast. The 
monotony of his hopeless refrain haunts the 
reader for days afterward : 

Tell me — his eyes seem to ask — why are these 
things so? Why have I a mother who depends on 
me alone when I am being sent away to die? . . . 
And presently, like a dumb, herded beast, patient, 
mute, carrying his load, he left me at the terminus. 
But it was long before I lost the memory of his face 
and of that chant of his, "C'est me qui est seul a la 
maison. . . . C'est me a une mere. C'est elle qui 
n'a pas le sou! " 

Slight as these sketches are, A Motley is a vol- 
ume which might be profitably placed in the hands 
of any young aspirant in the field of fiction, be- 
cause it shows how much can be extracted in the 
way of material from even the most trivial inci- 
dents. And for an understanding of Mr. Gals- 
worthy himself, of the things which interest him9 
of the angle of vision from which he looks at life 
it furnishes more than one indispensable keynote. 

This brings us down to just one more volume 
which needs separate mention, and a brief one, 



202 JOHN GALSWORTHY 

namely, The Patrician. There is nothing new 
about its theme; the only difference is that this 
time Mr. Galsworthy treats of a stratum some- 
what higher than his favorite upper middle class. 
He has nothing of importance to add to what he 
has already said in his earlier books ; he simply 
reiterates, under slightly different circumstances, 
the injustice and unhappiness resulting from the 
despotic force of conservatism, the heavy handi- 
cap of those who live their lives not as they them- 
selves would choose but as their rank dictates. In 
the vital issues as well as in the little details of 
daily intercourse, there is everywhere and all the 
time the invincible power of precedent, the iron- 
bound rule of prescribed conduct. The central 
theme of The Patrician deals with a young states- 
man whose misfortune it is to fall in love with one 
of the tenants on the family estate — a beautiful 
young woman living quite alone, whose isolated 
life gives rise to unkind and unfounded conject- 
ures. It turns out that she is eminently respecta- 
ble, the wife of a narrow-minded curate from 
whom she has separated and who refuses to help 
her secure her freedom. Now, her titled lover 
may make this woman his mistress, provided the 
fact does not become public knowledge ; but by one 
of the unwritten laws of his caste, he cannot openly 
protect her, nor, in case she should obtain a 
divorce, will public opinion allow him to marry 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 20$ 

her. The story is worked out quietly to a logical 
conclusion of gray and sombre tragedy. Mr. 
Galsworthy has been reproached for ending the 
book as he does and permitting both the man and 
the woman to acquiesce without a struggle in the 
decree of custom ; he has even been misunderstood 
and accused of having changed his attitude 
towards the established order of things, and to 
have intended this book as a sort of recantation — 
all of which means simply that Mr. Galsworthy's 
art of self-effacement has become almost too per- 
fect, his irony too subtle and elusive. Yet in this 
book he could not well have written otherwise than 
he has done. His purpose was not to preach indi- 
vidual revolt, but simply to show the workings of 
the existing system and the chaos that it wreaks in 
the lives of those who acquiesce in its dictates. 

In conclusion, there remain a few words to be 
said about what, for lack of a less hackneyed term, 
may be called Mr. Galsworthy's philosophy of 
life. For practical purposes it is somewhat dif- 
ficult to define a philosophy so largely negative 
and destructive as is Mr. Galsworthy's, so far as it 
may be read between the lines of his stories. 
Since he is a good artist, he usually refrains in 
his later books from openly expressing his personal 
views ; and yet, the resultant impression that one 
brings away from his books is, that if Mr. Gals- 
worthy were to be asked, "What is the matter 



204j JOHN GALSWORTHY 

with the world ? " he would answer sweepingly, 
" Everything is the matter ! " What he inveighs 
against is not specifically the injustice of existing 
marriage and divorce laws, nor the British sports- 
man's thoughtless cruelty to animals, nor the 
sharp cleavage of class from class, nor any one of 
a score of recurrent themes. It is the System, 
with a capital S, upon which he is always harp- 
ing; the immutable law and order of hereditary 
customs and obligations, that leave no scope for 
individual liberty, that grant no pardon for per- 
sonal eccentricity, that make men and women so 
many helpless, docile, self-complacent cogs in the 
big machine of modern life. 

Obviously, Mr. Galsworthy's interest in life is 
general rather than special; he is interested in 
humanity, rather than in the individual man or 
woman. In an essay already quoted in the chap- 
ter on Joseph Conrad, he bestowed what he be- 
lieved to be high praise on the author of Lord 
Jim on the ground that " The Universe is always 
saying: The little part called man is always 
smaller than the whole," and that in Conrad's 
novels " nature is first, man is second." Mr. Gals- 
worthy does not himself place nature ahead of 
man — nor as a matter of fact does Mr. Conrad — 
but he does put ethics and sociology, manners and 
customs, mankind in the aggregate, overwhelm- 
ingly ahead of the individual — and this, too, not- 



JOHN GALSWORTHY 205 

withstanding his ahnost inimitable gift of graphic 
individualization. For these reasons he misses 
almost as much as he gains. He seems to see little 
beauty in the placid, tranquil lives of gentle old 
ladies, absorbed in the daily happenings of their 
intimate home circle, knowing and caring for 
nothing beyond these limits, and realizing least of 
all the narrowness of their lives. In a world 
where the opportunities for activity are so many 
and so big, what right, he seems to say, has any 
human being to be insular and narrow and self- 
satisfied.'^ 

It is too early to say with assurance whither 
Mr. Galsworthy is tending. His latest novel, 
The Patrician, lacks to some extent the vital grip 
of his earlier work. My own personal experience 
with it was that, having occasion to read it for a 
second time, after an interval of a few months, I 
found that the impression left by the earlier read- 
ing had faded out almost as completely as the 
image of an unfixed photograph. The Athenaeum, 
in its review of The Patrician, said one rather un- 
kind thing; it said that this was a book which 
might have been written by Mrs. Humphry 
Ward. And unfortunately the Athenceum told 
the simple, undeniable truth. It does seem rather 
a handicap for an apostle of the new school of fic- 
tion to have his latest work already identified with 
the materials and methods of the Victorian era. 



ARNOLD BENNETT 

In spite of the mild scorn of Mr. William Dean 
Howells for that benighted portion of the reading 
public whose first initiation to the writings of Mr. 
Arnold Bennett came with the publication of 
The Old Wives'' Tale in this country, the fact re- 
mains that this particular bit of ignorance was 
by no means confined to the unenlightened, and 
that a good many critics of long standing made 
the mistake of assuming that Mr. Bennett was a 
newcomer in fiction and the novel in question a 
marvel of precocious genius. Such a mistake was 
not at all remarkable because, unlike a majority 
of the novelists of his generation who have since 
come into prominence, Mr. Bennett failed to pro- 
duce any early volume that attracted the atten- 
tion of American publishers. If one takes the 
trouble to look over the catalogue of that admi- 
rable and unfortunately defunct collection of fic- 
tion known as the Town and Country Library, it is 
surprising to see how many of the younger repu- 
tations in English fiction are represented there 
by volumes which to-day it would be difficult to 
procure in any other form — Mr. J. C. Snaith, for 
206 




Copyri£ht. Pirie MacDonald. N. Y 

ARNOLD BENNETT 



ARNOLD BENNETT 207 

instance, and Mr. Leonard Merrick. But Mr. Ben- 
nett was not of this number; and since he is one 
of those writers whose idiosyncrasies are largely to 
be explained by certain facts in their personal his- 
tories it seems well, before proceeding to an esti- 
mation of his work, to recapitulate as briefly as 
possible a few salient details of his life. As a 
matter of fact, Mr. Bennett is a man of forty 
years and upwards, with half of that period de- 
voted to the pursuit of literature, and upward of a 
score of published volumes of fiction to his account. 
He was born in 1867, in the Pottery District of 
North Staffordshire, England, the district that 
he has painted in more than one of his volumes 
under the caption of " The Five Towns" — the 
smoke and gloom and narrow-minded conserva- 
tism of which seem to have followed him to his 
new home across the Channel, with the same haunt- 
ing depression with which it follows his readers. 
He was educated at Newcastle, and for a time took 
up the study of law ; but later abandoned it for 
journalism, accepting in 1895 a position on a Lon- 
don publication called Woman, first as assistant 
editor, and three years later as editor-in-chief. 
In the midst of these duties he found time to pub- 
lish two volumes, A Man from the North (1898) 
and Polite Farces (1899). In a little volume 
which is largely autobiographical and which he 
has entitled The Truth About an Author, Mr. 



208 ARNOLD BENNETT 

Bennett has given us a rather graphic picture of 
these early years in London. He began his career 
as a free-lance in Fleet Street, with the belief that 
he had entered upon a glorious calling. He soon 
learned the grim reality. The free-lance he de- 
scribes as 

a tramp touting for odd jobs; a peddler crying stuff 
which is bought usually in default of better; a pro- 
ducer endeavoring to supply a market of whose con- 
ditions he is in ignorance more or less complete; a 
commercial traveler liable constantly to the insolence 
of an elegant West End draper " buyer." 

In substance, the Bohemia of Mr. Bennett's ex- 
perience is essentially the same Bohemia which 
George Gissing drew some years earlier in his 
New Grub Street, and not essentially different 
from the Bohemia depicted so vividly in Miss Sin- 
clair's The Divine Fire. In Mr. Bennett's case, 
however, free-lancing in time led to better things, 
and he has recorded with evident satisfaction the 
keen joy of the day when at last he sat down to 
write his first novel, under what he called " the 
sweet influences of the de Goncourts, Turgenev, 
Flaubert and de Maupassant." The purpose up- 
permost in Mr. Bennett's mind, so he tells us, was 
to imitate the physical characteristics of the 
French novel. There were to be no poetical quo- 
tations, no titles to the chapters; the narrative 



ARNOLD BENNETT 209 

was to be divided irregularly by Roman numerals 
only. In short, the book was to be a mosaic of 
imitations of Flaubert and the de Goncourt 
brothers. Life being gray, sinister and melan- 
choly, his first book should similarly be melan- 
choly, sinister and gray. And, to cap this confes- 
sion neatly, Mr. Bennett adds the fact that at 
this time he was twenty-seven, and the comment 
that " at that age one is captious, and liable to 
err in judgment." 

This first book brought Mr. Bennett some 
little reputation, a few favorable reviews — and a 
number that were not so favorable, together with 
a rather disheartening result in royalties. For 
the mere sake of recording what the weightier sort 
of contemporary criticism thought of A Man from 
the North, it seems worth while to note that the 
Academy pronounced it " the kind of worthlessly 
clever book which neither touches nor moves the 
reader," and that the Athenceum defined its pre- 
vailing spirit as "not the poetry of the common- 
place, not the romance of the commonplace, but the 
veriest commonplace of the commonplace." It 
was not strange, under the circumstances, that 
this first novel brought a certain amount of dis- 
illusionment, and that Mr. Bennett temporarily 
laid aside his theor}^ of art for art's sake, and de- 
termined to write a serial of the kind that yields a 
revenue. He had had sufficient editorial expe- 



210 ARNOLD BENNETT 

rience to know the qualities that a serial of this 
sort must possess. His theme, to borrow his own 
words, was not original, but " a brilliant imposture 
of originality." The tale was divided into twelve 
installments of five thousand words each, and he 
composed it in twenty-four half days. Every 
morning walking down the Thames Embankment 
he contrived a chapter of two thousand five hun- 
dred words, and every afternoon he wrote the 
chapter. The result of this labor was sold to a 
syndicate for the sum of seventy-five pounds, and 
the author saw the gates of fortune opening. 
There were still some remains of an artistic con- 
science which prompted Bennett to sign his serial 
with a pseudonym. Several aliases invented- by 
himself proving unsatisfactory, a friend off'ered 
him that of " Sampson Death." But the syndi- 
cate met this suggestion by saying that such a 
name would have the effect of depressing readers. 
" Why not sign your own name? " " And," writes 
Mr. Bennett, " I signed my own name. I, appren- 
tice of Flaubert et Cie., stood forth to the universe 
as a sensation-monger." 

The immediate result of his profitable sensa- 
tion-mongering was that it enabled him to resign 
from the editorship of Woman and devote all his 
time to the manufacturing of books. He chose 
to make his home in France; and in liis new and 
more congenial surroundings continued to turn 



ARNOLD BENNETT 211 

forth new volumes with a diligence and a speed 
that would seem incompatible with careful work- 
manship if it were not for the fact that his various 
volumes are each in its own class of fairly uniform 
quality. As to the ethics of debasing a talent 
of high order to pander to the popular demand of 
tawdry sensationalism, a good deal has already 
been said, and a good deal yet remains to say. 
Over and over again comments have been made, 
with all the varying degrees of irony, upon Mr. 
Bennett's versatility in appearing before the pub- 
lic " in a dual capacity as a writer of lucrative 
trash and as an artist"; but perhaps the matter 
has never been more effectively worded than by 
Mr. Howells when he wrote : 

Apparently Mr. Bennett has found a comfort or 
a relaxation or an indemnification in writing a bad 
book after he has written a good one. It is very 
curious; it cannot be from a wavering ideal; for no 
man could have seen the truth about life so clearly 
as Mr. Bennett^ with any after doubts of its unique 
value: and yet we have him from time to time indulg- 
ing himself in the pleasure of painting it falsely. 

In other words, gloss it over as we may, the 
ugly fact remains that Mr. Bennett has for more 
than a decade deliberately prostitued a talent that 
approaches close to the border-line of genius for 
the sake of cold pounds, shillings and pence. And 



S12 ARNOLD BENNETT 

he has not the saving grace of a sense of shame. 
His critics, with many a sigh and shake of the 
head, have reluctantly admitted that his " market- 
able trash" has in no way injured in quality, al- 
though it may have diminished in quantity, the 
volumes in which he takes himself seriously. 
Their attitude is amusingly like that of a phy- 
sician who is forced to concede that an over-in- 
dulgence in alcohol or opium has not impaired the 
mental brilliance of a patient. But in Mr. Ar- 
nold Bennett's case, I take the liberty of thinking 
that the critics are wrong. I am a firm believer 
in the doctrine that no man can serve two masters, 
least of all where it is a case of simultaneously 
worshiping at the altar of the Divine Fire and 
the altar of Mammon. Mr. Bennett, in his dual 
capacity, always suggests to me the two familiar 
classical masks of Tragedy and Comedy, neither 
of them seeing life as a whole, but each viewing the 
outside world with its own characteristic grimace. 
Now, it is a notorious commonplace that the man 
who spends the better part of his life as a paid 
buffoon, the court jester, the harlequin, the circus 
clown, sees life through the eyes of a confirmed 
misanthrope ; the merrier the jest that he cracks in 
public, the more impossible it becomes in private to 
stir the lips into the wraith of a smile. And that 
is precisely what I think is the trouble with the 
whole series of Mr. Arnold Bennett's stories of the 



ARNOLD BENNETT 213 

Five Towns. It is not that they are untrue; it 
is simply that the joy of living has been sucked out 
of them, as moisture is sucked up by a sheet of 
blotting paper. Mr. Bennett has told us minutely 
of his methods of work ; so many hours a day on 
his " Modern Fantasias," so many hours on his 
serious books, the books which presumably he 
still writes under the " sweet influences " of his 
chosen French and Russian models. But he is 
trying to do something of which human nerves 
and brain tissues are incapable. The world is re- 
vealed to us in a certain number of primal colors. 
And we all know that if we tire our eyes by look- 
ing too steadily, for a time, at any one of these 
colors, red, for instance, it grows dull to our 
perception — and if we turn our gaze to some 
other object in which the complementary color, 
green, predominates, what little red may be pres- 
ent is scarcely perceived, while the green flaunts 
itself in our face with an unprecedented eff*ul- 
gence. That is precisely what happens to Mr. 
Bennett; he exhausts his power of perceiving the 
reds and yellows, the joyous notes of life, in his 
purely negligible productions, and the consequence 
is that his mental faculties are too strained and 
too weary to perceive, in Anna of the Five Towns y 
in The Old Wives' Tale, in Clayhanger, any glint 
of those brighter, warmer colors without which, 
we all know, life would be too monochrome, too 



214 ARNOLD BENNETT 

hopelessly gray for human endurance, even to 
those inured to the smoke-laden atmosphere of 
the Five Towns. 

None the less, it is the inalienable right of every 
artist to choose his own pigments. A painter may 
limit himself to cold black and white in painting a 
sunset ; provided, of course, that he does not claim 
that a sunset in nature has no other tones. Mr. 
Bennett is an unrivaled expert in mixing leaden 
tints ; his palette runs through the whole gamut 
of drabs, and grays, and slates, tan, and dun, and 
sepia. He makes us behold life, raw, anguished, 
hopeless life, through glasses, smoked not so 
deeply as to dull any of the poignancy, but suffi- 
ciently to rob us of the symbolic blue of hope. He 
is within his rights. He tells the truth about life 
— only, it must be borne in mind that he does not 
tell the whole truth. 

It is difficult to master patience to speak even 
perfunctorily of Mr. Bennett's purely commercial 
productions, the series which he reels forth with 
such amazing fertility and which some remnant 
of artistic conscience compels him to label "Fan- 
tasias." They are all built on much the same 
formula; there is a taint of megalomania in their 
conception and development, a hugeness of set- 
ting and environment, an unparalleled and inex- 
haustible opulence of color and light, of ostenta- 
tion and gaiety, of thronging men and women, 



ARNOLD BENNETT 215 

and the glitter of jewels and the sheen of priceless 
fabrics. The Grand Babylon Hotel, for instance, 
which was the forerunner of the series, introduces 
us to a vast fashionable caravansery in the West 
End ; an American multi-millionaire, one Theodore 
Racksole by name, and his fascinating and self- 
willed daughter, Nella, happen to be dining there ; 
and the young woman, out of sheer perversity, de- 
sires, in preference to anything which the elabo- 
rate menu offers, a simple beefsteak and a glass of 
beer. When it develops that this homely fare is 
not to be had, Mr. Theodore Racksole absents 
himself from the dining-room for a few brief 
minutes and returns as proprietor of the hotel, 
having purchased it for a number of pounds which 
probably looks quite imposing to the class of Eng- 
lish readers who like this sort of trash. Now it 
happens that the Grand Babylon Hotel is a hot- 
bed of intrigue; that Jules, the imperturbable 
waiter, Rocco, the incomparable chef, and Felix 
Babylon, late proprietor of the hotel, one and all 
have their parts to play in an international in- 
trigue involving the fate of the King of Bosnia. 
And in sheer justice to Mr. Bennett, it must be 
conceded that, if he cannot quite compete, on 
their own ground, with writers of the class of 
Max Pemberton and Phillips Oppenheim, he gives 
them, in racing parlance, a pretty good run for 
their money. 



216 ARNOLD BENNETT 

Of the same general character are Teresa of 
Watling Street, in which motor cars figure promi- 
nently and which one outspoken reviewer tersely 
dismissed as the work of " a literary trickster, a 
juggler in fiction "; The Loot of Cities, in which 
the underlying idea seems to be an appreciation of 
the delicious absurdity of imagining a young and 
genial plutocrat who, in search of diversion, hits 
upon the expedient of planning a series of colos- 
sal robberies, designed to cripple rival plutocrats 
in a wholesale fashion ; Hugo, in which a story of 
involved and startling intrigue takes place in a gi- 
gantic shop situated in Sloane Street — the sort 
of establishment that closely approaches the 
American conception of a department store, save 
that it outdoes it by being constructed on palatial 
lines, surmounted by four or five stories of the 
most expensive residential apartments in London, 
and further equipped with roof-gardens, high- 
class restaurants, and endless other forms of phys- 
ical and mental entertainment; and The City of 
Pleasure^ a sort of metropolitan Luna Park, con- 
ceived, in the same spirit of extravagance, as a 
colossal popular pleasure ground yielding its pro- 
prietors an income of ten thousand pounds a 
week. In other words, Mr. Bennett's formula for 
this class of work is, in terms of bookkeeping, the 
formula of Brewster*s Millions — only that it lacks 
the cleverness of Mr. McCutcheon's central idea. 



ARNOLD BENNETT 217 

Between his riotous melodramatic " Fantasias " 
and the Five Towns Series, on which his repu- 
tation is solidly built, Mr. Bennett has produced a 
miscellaneous lot of volumes ranging from serious 
to farcical and difficult to classify otherwise than 
by the unsatisfactory generalization that they are 
not cheap enough to be profitable merchandise nor 
fine enough to be literature. As specimens of this 
intermediate class, it will be sufficient to comment 
briefly on three volumes which happen to have been 
reprinted in America, Buried Alive, Benry the Aw- 
dacious and The Glimpse. The first of these 
three is a book towards which it is not difficult to 
be indulgent, for it not only represents an honest 
effort to be humorous, with the further merit of 
succeeding, but it has an undercurrent of satire 
regarding the vanity of pompous obsequies, the 
elusiveness of fame. More specifically, Buried 
Alive is simply the chronicle of a very shy man, 
who for years has depended upon the services of 
his valet to save him from contact with the world, 
and when that valet suddenly dies the master in his 
first hour of bewilderment seizes eagerly upon the 
blunder of a strange doctor, who confuses master 
and man, and allows himself to be declared dead. 
Now the master happens to be a famous painter, 
how famous even he has never guessed until he is 
pronounced dead — and he has the dubious pleasure 
of reading long obituaries about himself, of fol- 



218 ARNOLD BENNETT 

lowing the stormy discussion that ensues as to 
the proper manner of paying him honor, and 
finally of attending his own funeral, when the 
ashes of his valet are laid to rest in Westminster 
Abbey. Such is the opening of an extravaganza 
which is never tedious, never vulgar, but from 
beginning to end permeated with that brand of 
British humor already made familiar to us through 
the Gilbert-and-Sullivan librettos. 

Denry the Audacious is another name for a vol- 
ume which appeared in England as The Card; and 
it is a question which of the two titles is more in 
need of explanation. A " card " is a person who 
lives by his wits, who can turn his hand to all 
sort of odd makeshifts, honorable or otherwise, 
and justify them by making them successes. In 
this sense, Denry certainly earns his right to the 
appellation. The hero's extraordinary name, by 
the way, which serves as the American title and 
looks as though it were the result of careless proof- 
reading, is briefly explained at the outset by the 
simple fact that Denry's mother, " a somewhat 
gloomy woman, thin, with a tongue ! " found that 
she could save a certain amount of time every day 
by addressing him as Denry instead of Edward 
Henry. Of plot this volume is very nearly guilt- 
less. In so far as it has any, it belongs to the 
picaresco type. Denry's adventures are practi- 
cally all of one kind and they might have been ex- 



ARNOLD BENNETT 219 

panded and multiplied to fill a dozen volumes or 
curtailed to the dimensions of a short story. His 
audacity amounts to this : whenever he finds him- 
self in a position menacing him with failure, social 
or financial, instead of losing courage, temporising, 
beating a retreat as sober common sense would 
dictate, he drives boldly, even brazenly ahead and 
wrenches a colossal triumph from the very jaws 
of disaster. A quite simple formula, you see, and 
one permitting of infinite variations. Add to this 
the fact that Mr, Bennett has a genuine sense of 
humor and the ability to make the most out of a 
paradoxical situation and you have the whole ex- 
planation why a book like this, which would have 
been a flat failure at the hands of ninety-nine 
writers out of a hundred, proves in this case to be 
very good fun indeed. 

The Glimpse, the third volume singled out for 
separate comment, is evidently meant by Mr. Ben- 
nett as a serious piece of work ; and while it is not 
to be put for a moment in the same class with 
Clayhanger or The Old Wives' Tale, it is none the 
less a work of distinct originality. Whether it 
was really worth doing is quite another question. 
There is nothing striking about the opening chap- 
ters ; simply the usual commonplace situation of 
an unhappy marriage : a man and a woman, hope- 
lessly incompatible, drifting steadily apart, he 
finding solace in intellectual pursuits, she driven, 



220 ARNOLD BENNETT 

through sheer restlessness, into more and more 
venturesome companionship. Then comes a day 
when, through a series of blunders that lead her 
to believe that her husband has learned the truth, 
she confesses her love for another man. The hus- 
band's sudden anger, stoically controlled, throws 
too great a strain upon his nervous system, brings 
on serious heart trouble, and is followed by cata- 
lepsy, and apparently death. Here begins the 
second part of the story, highly imaginative, 
strange to the point of uncanniness — the expe- 
riences of a liberated soul in its first glimpse of life 
beyond the grave. As a sheer bit of speculation, a 
brilliant juggling with words, the episode refuses 
to be forgotten. But sober second thought makes 
it clear that all such speculation is quite futile. 
The end of the story comes with a grim swiftness. 
The man, as it happens, is not dead, merely in a 
trance, and after a few hours he struggles back, 
but the irrevocable has already happened. The 
foolish, wayward wife, who through all her folly 
has secretly loved her husband and no one else, is 
overwhelmed with remorse, when she feels that it is 
her confession that has killed him. And when he 
opens his eyes on the world again, she has already 
swallowed oxalic acid and is beyond medical aid. 
Now, this is undeniably an unusual story, and 
an uncomfortable one as well; but no one would 
ever infer from it that the author had the power 



ARNOLD BENNETT 221 

to produce works of such real importance as Anna 
of the Five Towns, Leonora, and the several sub- 
sequent volumes that have for their setting a 
string of uglj, busy manufacturing centers in the 
pottery district of Staffordshire. In Anna of the 
Five Towns Mr. Bennett for the first time set his 
feet firmly on his rightful path. It has the same 
pervading grayness, physically and morally, the 
same overhanging veil of grimy smoke, the same 
dull helplessness of lookout that characterize what 
has come to be known as his distinctive work — 
much as a certain kind of glaze, a certain charac- 
teristic color come to be the hall-mark of a par- 
ticular sort of pottery. Anna is the daughter of 
a miser, a Wesleyan Methodist, who has made a 
fortune as a potter's valuer and has retired, in 
m_iddle age, both from his business connection with 
the potteries and from his former activity as a 
pillar of the Church. He is a widower and his 
eldest daughter Anna keeps house for him on one 
pound sterling a week, despite the fact that the 
miser is worth over sixty thousand pounds, and 
Anna has almost as much in her own right, inher- 
ited from her mother. Imagine a dingy little 
house buried alive in a dingy little row, a house to 
which no visitor is ever allowed ingress, and two 
forlorn girls, lonely, half fed, miserably tyran- 
nized over by a consistently brutal and morose old 
man. It is not strange that when Henry Mynor, 



222 ARNOLD BENNETT 

one of the few successful and eligible young men 
of the neighborhood, proposes to Anna, she should 
at once accept him in a maze of bewildered grati- 
tude. And having given her word, Anna is of that 
dutiful and conscientious type that will allow noth- 
ing to prevent her from keeping it. But sense 
of duty does not save Anna from learning from 
another man what love really means, and in con- 
sequence the grayness of life, which promised for a 
time to lift, settles down upon her more hopelessly 
and irrevocably than ever. 

Leonora is another similar story of the same 
sordid life, constructed with the same solid 
and ambitious craftsmanship. The heroine has 
reached the threshold of forty years. " She was 
not too soon shocked nor too severe in her ver- 
dicts, nor the victim of too many illusions." She 
is the wife of an elderly manufacturer and the 
mother of three grown daughters ; yet neither 
her years nor her responsibilities save her from 
dreams of romance and illicit love. There is a 
prosperous American whom chance brings to 
break the dull monotony of the Five Towns, and it 
is only the fortunate occurrence of the death of 
Leonora's husband that saves her from any worse 
indiscretion than a second marriage. 

But it is with The Old Wives' Tale that Mr. 
Bennett achieves for the first time a work that be- 
yond all dispute or cavil is of the first magnitude. 



ARNOLD BENNETT ^23 

This is the book of which Dr. Robertson Nicoll ex- 
pressed himself, on its first appearance, in these 
enthusiastic terms : " The story is a masterpiece, 
and it lacks only a touch of poetry to put it in 
the very front rank." And frankly it is a book 
which deserves all that Dr. Nicoll said in its favor 
and something more besides. It is only at long 
intervals that a piece of fiction appears which 
conveys an impression of such magnitude, such 
finished workmanship and such a fund of reserve 
power. There are many books which impress one 
with a sense of amplitude, a sense of being spread 
over a very broad canvas. It is much rarer to 
find, as in the present case, a book which gives a 
sense of depth as well as breadth, a book that has 
a wonderful, far-reaching perspective, making you 
feel that you are looking not merely upon the sur- 
face of life, but through and beyond the surface 
into the deep and hidden meanings of human ex- 
istence. As in the case of all novels which really 
deserve the attribute of bigness. The Old Wives' 
Tale achieves its effects without the aid of a spec- 
tacular background or of exceptional and exalted 
characters. Indeed, it would be difficult to im- 
agine anything more essentially mediocre and com- 
monplace, more uniformly dull and gray than the 
whole external atmosphere of this strong and 
poignant story. A small manufacturing town of 
middle England, with scant sunlight struggling 



224 ARNOLD BENNETT 

vainly to pierce the veil of soft-coal smoke which 
perpetually overhangs it ; a central square with its 
five public houses, its bank, its two chemists, its 
five drapers ; and on the floor above the most im- 
posing of these drapers' shops living apartments 
occupied by the family of this particular shop- 
keeper. Narrow, hopelessly conservative, un- 
speakably bourgeois in their attitude toward life, 
the Baines family, nevertheless, stand out in this 
story as fair average representatives of the human 
race, sufficient exponents of the three great mys- 
teries of life: birth, marriage and death. There 
are, of course, exceptional people in the world, peo- 
ple who achieve great things, and whose names 
are enrolled permanently on the honor roll of 
fate. But to the great majority the sum and 
substance of life is, roughly speaking, somewhat 
after this fashion : there is a brief period of youth- 
ful illusion, when one forms brave plans for great 
achievements, and the years which really count 
all lie ahead in a glamour of rosy hope ; and then, 
almost before one knows how it has come about, 
one is old, and the years that count all lie behind 
and the sum total of accomplishments, as one looks 
back, seems insignificant, and one is glad to cher- 
ish the memories of brief, fugitive happiness 
snatched here and there by the way. This is not 
an unfair picture of the average life of the great 
struggling middle class in an overpopulated coun- 



ARNOLD BENNETT 225 

try of the Old World. And this Is precisely what 
Mr. Arnold Bennett has succeeded in giving us In 
his Old Wives* Tale of the lives of Constance and 
Sophia Balnes, the two daughters of the bedridden 
old draper, through fifty years of hopes and hard- 
ships and disillusion. It would serve no useful pur- 
pose to analyze the plot of this volume, for the pat- 
tern Is too Intricate to be briefly summed up — it 
has the multifold and wonderful intricacy of actual 
life. It is enough to say that there are very few 
books in English which mirror back so truly and 
with such a fine sense of proportion the rela- 
tive amounts of joy and sorrow that enter Into 
the average human life — the unconscious selfish- 
ness of youth, the rash haste to reach forward and 
grasp opportunities, the relentless encroachment 
of disease, the loneliness of old age, the Inevi- 
tability of death. Naturally the book is, with 
all Its merits, a depressing one. It leaves be- 
hind it a sense of grayness and loneliness and per- 
sonal loss, and all the more so because it possesses 
that rare power of making us feel the brotherhood 
of these commonplace people that fill Its pages, 
and so rendering their successive passing away a 
personal and Intimate sorrow to each one of us. 
Undoubtedly, a Touch of Poetry, that Is to say, a 
strain of romanticism, idealising the meaner traits 
of character, the harsher blows of fate, would 
lighten the gloom and relieve the tension, but in- 



gS6 ARNOLD BENNETT 

evitably it would have shorn the book of its chief 
strength, the incomparable strength of literal and 
fearless truth. It stands out conspicuously as 
the one volume in which Mr. Bennett has justified 
his practice of painting in verbal grisaille. 

When Clayhanger first appeared, it was an- 
nounced as the first of a trilogy of novels dealing 
with the Five Towns, the central theme of which 
was to be the breaking down of the old spirit by 
the new in the central provinces of England. The 
first volume of this trilogy relates the history of a 
certain Edward Clayhanger, a master printer and 
son of a master printer before him, from the time 
of his leaving school to his somewhat belated mar- 
riage at the age of thirty-five. His state of subjec- 
tion to his father, and the latter's justification of 
his tyranny on the ground that eventually the son 
will " come into everything," are only one part of 
the old order of things which Mr. Bennett tries 
to show in this trilogy to be slowly breaking up 
and passing away. It is impossible to consider 
Clayhanger in its relation to the rest of the trilogy 
until we have both of the remaining volumes before 
us ; structurally, if taken by itself, it is undeniably 
an unwieldy, disproportioned piece of work, as 
full of loose ends and projecting corners as a 
chance fragment from a puzzle picture. Just how 
Mr. Bennett proposes to fit in all these irregulari- 
ties and round them out into a finished symmetry 



ARNOLD BENNETT 227 

by the completion of his trilogy — whether, indeed, 
he can accomplish the task at all, or whether the 
finished group will still have the same structural 
defect, the same lack of proportion as the first of 
its members, it would be unfair to judge in advance. 
Hilda Lessways, instead of helping the situation, 
complicates it. Instead of sustaining the high 
standard set by Clayhanger, as a human document, 
it falls emphatically below the level of that volume ; 
and instead of beginning the task of rounding out 
and filling in, it simply adds just so many more 
loose ends and projecting corners. In fact, to 
discuss Hilda Lessways, at the present moment, 
and before we know what miracle of ingenuity Mr. 
Bennett may achieve with his concluding volume, 
would be premature — as premature and as unfair 
as it would be to analyze Clayhanger from the 
viewpoint of construction. You cannot discuss 
the principles of proportion in relation to an un- 
finished building or a dismantled ruin ; you cannot 
base an argument about the harmonic poise of the 
human body on a mutilated masterpiece like the 
Milo Venus. But, if we set aside completely the 
question of construction, and consider Clayhanger 
in just one aspect — the aspect in which, one sus- 
pects, the author himself would prefer it to be con- 
sidered — namely, as a study of the unfolding and 
maturing of a single human character, it would 
be rather difficult to overpraise it. But it is neces- 



228 ARNOLD BENNETT 

sary, if I am to hope to find readers who agree 
with me, that I should add one proviso : namely, 
that they read Clayhanger intelligently, approach- 
ing it in a spirit of seriousness, as a deep and 
careful study of life deseryes to be approached, 
and not as one seeking an afternoon's entertain- 
ment. We all of us have our instinctive upward 
gropings in early childhood ; we all have dreams, 
more or less definite, of the great things we pro- 
pose to do some day or other, with our lives ; and 
we all find that sooner or later, an iron-handed des- 
tiny — predestination, if you like religious termi- 
nology ; heredity and environment, if your leaning 
is towards the sciences — has reached out to say 
peremptorily, " so far you may go, and no further ; 
you wish to do so-and-so, but instead you must do 
something quite different." Such conditions are 
quite independent of the place in the world to 
which we happen to be born, whether socially or 
geographically; it is just as true of a small, mid- 
dle-class English boy, looking out upon the 
smoke-grimed horizon of the pottery district, as 
it would be of some luckier brother in London or 
New York. Almost any one can write local stories 
that never for a moment get beyond the confines of 
the native village. It is the prerogative of just a 
few writers of Mr. Bennett's caliber to remain 
within the limits of their native village and yet 
at the same time to make their theme universal. 



ARNOLD BENNETT 229 

One can imagine, of course, some unsympathetic, 
unenlightened reader flinging aside Clayhanger^ at 
the end of the first fifty pages, with the random 
verdict, " Oh, this is a tiresome story about a 
stupid old fogy who has a job-printing estab- 
lishment in a stupid old town, and about his son, 
who wants to be an architect and has not brains 
enough or courage enough to go his own way ! " 
and, so far as it goes, this is a true statement of 
the book's substance. Its value as a human docu- 
ment lies, first, in the untiring fidelity with which 
Mr. Bennett convinces us that his people are so 
constituted that they must inevitably have said 
and done precisely what he records, and not other- 
wise; and, secondly, making due allowance for 
local differences, that his people are much the 
same as people everywhere else, with the same 
hopes and fears, the same futile efforts, the same 
disappointments. 

Clayhanger is a formidable task to undertake, 
if you do not chance to be in the mood for it. It 
lacks only two pages of a round seven hundred — 
and it does not even lack those, if you count the 
title-page and table of contents. But when you 
have once gone to the end of that book, if you are 
a reader of real discernment and broad sympa- 
thies, you will have added one or two names to 
your list of permanent friends in fiction ; you will 
have been stimulated to the point of a few new 



230 ARNOLD BENNETT 

thoughts, or at least a readjustment of several old 
ones ; and besides this, you will have been filled 
with amazement of a cumulative sort at certain 
unexpected flashes of intuition that Mr. Bennett is 
all the time exhibiting. You will find yourself 
asking over and over again, when you are con- 
fronted with one of these shrewd little observations 
of life, these illuminating explanations of the why 
and the wherefore : " How in the world did Arnold 
Bennett come to know these things, and, knowing 
them, succeed in expressing them in this inimitable 
way? How has he caught so marvelously the 
vagueness of mixed motives, that baffle all of us, 
when we try to explain our own actions ? " For it 
is a fact that Mr. Bennett quite frequently dissects 
and analyzes human impulses and desires with the 
subtlety of a Henry James — and yet without ob- 
scurity. No writer is definitely placed during his 
lifetime; but Mr. Bennett is, up to the present 
time, peculiarly and exceptionally misjudged and 
alternately overrated and underpraised. He cer- 
tainly does not deserve one-half the censure that 
you will find in the average estimate of his earlier 
books ; but, on the other hand, there is an even 
greater exaggeration implied in the recent tribute 
by Mr. William Dean Howells, when he says, in 
effect, that since Flaubert and the de Goncourts, 
Maupassant and Zola have passed away, since 
Tolstoy is no more, and Perez Galdos and Arman- 



ARNOLD BENNETT 231 

do Palacio Valdes are silent, Mr. Bennett is the 
only living novelist he can confidently look to for 
pleasure. If my own enjoyment were so curtailed, 
I am afraid that I should find life overhung with 
the same leaden pall of gloom as envelops the 
Five Towns that Mr. Bennett has made famous. 
As a matter of fact, I could name offhand at least 
a score of novelists who may be trusted to provide 
quite as much pleasure as Mr. Bennett, to be 
equally true to the realities of life, and to be, in 
some respects, better craftsmen, and possessed of 
a higher ideal of art, a greater reluctance to pros- 
titute it to the demands of expediency. But this 
does not alter the fact that Mr. Bennett is an ex- 
ceedingly interesting product of the modern tend- 
encies in English fiction, as contrasted with the 
American variety ; and one shrewdly suspects 
that he has in him the capability of doing even 
bigger things. 



ANTHONY HOPE 

It Is a sufficiently pleasant task to undertake to 
write a brief appreciation of Mr. Anthony Hope. 
The prevailing urbanity of his manner, the sus- 
tained sparkle of his wit, the agreeable expectation 
that he arouses of something stimulating about 
to happen, largely disarm criticism. Besides, he 
does not seem to demand to be taken too seriously ; 
he is not a preacher or reformer, he is not trying to 
revolutionize the world ; he is too well pleased with 
men and women as they actually are, to desire to 
make them something different. In short, he is 
a suave and charming public entertainer, and like 
all wise entertainers he alters the character of his 
program in accordance with the fluctuations of 
public taste. And being both versatile and far- 
sighted he is usually in the van of each new move- 
ment. The God in the Car, his story of gigantic 
land speculations in South Africa, with the Her- 
culean figure whom he chooses to disguise under 
the name of " Juggernaut," appeared in 1894, thus 
antedating by five years The Colossus, by Morley 
Roberts. Phroso, with its romantic setting among 
the islands of modern Greece, anticipated by a year 




ANTHONY HOPE 



ANTHONY HOPE 

Mr. E. F. Benson's analogous attempts, The Vin- 
tage and The Capsina. When the revival of the 
English historical novel was at its height, he suc- 
ceeded once more in coming in ahead of his com- 
petitors, and Simon Dale, which appeared in 1898 
and is a study of Restoration manners, with Nell 
Gwynn for its central interest, led the way for 
The Orange Girl by Sir Walter Besant, issued in 
1899, and F. Frankfort Moore's Nell Gwynn, 
Comedian, which was not published until 1900. 

But although he so cleverly adapts himself to 
the trend of public taste, Mr. Anthony Hope is not 
an innovator; he adapts but does not originate. 
Yet it is no uncommon thing to hear him errone- 
ously praised for having created two new and 
widely popular types of fiction, the Zenda type 
and that of The Dolly Dialogues. Now, The Pris- 
oner of Zenda, as we remember at once when we 
stop to think, is not the first up-to-date sword and 
buckler story of an imaginary principality ; it was 
preceded, by nearly a decade, by Stevenson's 
Prince Otto; and the only reason that it so often 
gets the credit of being the forerunner of its class 
is simply because it was done with a defter, lighter 
touch, a more spontaneous inspiration. Similarly, 
The Dolly Dialogues are not the first attempt to 
imitate in English the sparkle and the piquancy 
of the Gallic dialogue in the form that " Gyp " and 
Henri Lavedan have made familiar. Although it 



234? ANTHONY HOPE 

is quite likely that at that time Anthony Hope had 
never even heard of it, The Story of the Gadshys 
had at least three years the start of The Dolly Dia- 
logues, and even though it was done with a heavier 
hand, it succeeded in getting a greater effective- 
ness out of the type. 

But, after all, statistics of this sort, while inter- 
esting to a person of precise and inquiring mind, 
have little or no bearing upon the sources of enjoy- 
ment which a surprisingly large number of people 
undoubtedly find in Mr. Hope's writings. And 
there is variety enough among them to suit all 
tastes. He began in a spirit of blithe and irre- 
sponsible romanticism; he has gradually come, in 
his later years, to look upon life in a rather matter- 
of-fact way and to picture, by choice, the more 
serious problems of life in the social world to which 
he belongs. Yet his novels, even the most am- 
bitious of them, never suggest the ponderousness 
of a novel-with-a-purpose ; he never forgets what 
is expected from a conscientious entertainer. And 
one reason why he so uniformly succeeds is that 
he is an exceedingly good craftsman ; he has mas- 
tered the sheer mechanics of his art. It is never 
wise for a novelist, whatever his literary creed 
may be, to be wantonly scornful of technique. 
There are just a few erratic geniuses who, because 
they have in them certain big thoughts that are 
struggling for utterance and apparently cannot 



ANTHONY HOPE 235 

be uttered in the simple usual way, boldly break 
the established rules and make new ones to suit 
their needs. To draw an offhand parallel, they 
are somewhat in the position of a man who, al- 
though untrained in public speaking, is listened 
to indulgently because of the importance of what 
he has to say. But your public entertainer enjoys 
no such license ; and the lighter and more irre- 
sponsible his theme the more perfect must be his 
execution. And it is because Mr. Hope possesses 
that magic touch of the born story teller, that such 
delightful triflings as The Dolly Dialogues and The 
Indiscretion of the Duchess seem to linger in the 
memory with perennial youth, while many another 
weightier volume has faded out with the passage 
of years. 

Accordingly, Mr. Hope belongs to that order of 
novelists about whom it is not only more enjoy- 
able but more profitable to gossip genially than 
to weigh strictly in the balance. It is so easy 
to become garrulous over volumes that have worn 
well and aff'ord many a pleasant hour of relaxa- 
tion. It would be purposeless to take up serially 
each one of his many volumes, analyze and pigeon- 
hole it according to its relative value. The better 
and the franker thing to do is to admit that there 
are certain volumes by Mr. Hope which gave the 
present writer genuine pleasure, and certain others 
that gave him no pleasure at all, and that those 



236 ANTHONY HOPE 

falling under the first division are the only ones 
which it seems worth while to discuss. In his ear- 
lier period the mere mention of Anthony Hope con- 
jured up scenes of spirited adventure, reckless dar- 
ing, gallant heroes combining the good breeding, 
the patrician ease, the assured manner of the bet- 
ter class of young Englishmen possessing the 
double advantage of birth and education, who, 
nevertheless, despite their studied reserve and im- 
maculateness of dress, are plunged by a whim 
of fate into adventures of extraordinary daring 
and sublime audacity, — adventures that would 
have taxed the prowess of Dumas's Immortal 
Three. It is a clever formula, this trick of tak- 
ing certain types of familiar everyday people 
straight out of prosaic actuality and compelling 
them, whether they will or no, to perform romantic 
deeds against a romantic background. This pecu- 
liar combination was certainly a happy thought. 
It appealed to that latent thirst for adventure 
which we almost all possess ; it unconsciously flat- 
tered the reader with a new sense of daring, a feel- 
ing that he too, if thus suddenly and surprisingly 
transported into Zendaland, might similarly rise 
to the occasion and achieve great deeds. There is 
no purpose served by analyzing once again the 
story of The Prisoner of Zenda, It is one of those 
stories the artificiality of which stands out glar- 
ingly the moment one starts to lay its bones bare. 



ANTHONY HOPE 237 

Any story which depends upon the chance resem- 
blance of two human beings, a resemblance so close, 
so misleading, that even the wife of one of the two 
is at a loss to distinguish them, takes on, when 
stated briefly, apart from the glamour of the tale 
itself, an air of palpable falsity to life. And yet 
the fact remains that tens of thousands of readers 
have lost themselves, forgotten time and space, 
in their utter absorption in the dilemma of the 
Princess Flavia, who finds in Rudolph Rassendyl 
all the qualities which might have made it possible 
for her to love her husband, if only he had been 
as close a replica of Rassendyl morally as he was 
physically. 

I do not mind admitting that personally I revert 
more frequently to The Dolly Dialogues than to 
any other volume by Mr. Hope. This is not merely 
because of the delicate touch and epigrammatic 
neatness for which they have been so universally 
praised. Superficially considered they are a series 
of encounters between a sparkling and fascinating 
little lady and a sedate and nimble-witted gentle- 
man, whom it is insinuated that the Lady Dolly has 
jilted. Now, the real fascination about these bril- 
liant exchanges of repartee lies chiefly in the subtle 
and yet elusive implications that we are always on 
the point of reading between the lines, and yet 
never quite get in their entirety. That Mr. Carter 
has long been a worshiper at the shrine of Lady 



238 ANTHONY HOPE 

Dolly, that he has many a time felt a pang of re- 
gret that his fortune in life has made him ineligible, 
that he considers her husband not half grateful 
enough to Providence and that his own assumed 
air of sentimental resignation has in it a little 
touch of genuine regret, — all this we get pretty 
clearly. And yet, we are well aware, all the time, 
that Mr. Carter, in spite of an occasional twinge 
of envy, would not change his condition if he 
could; that, although he may not be precisely 
aware of it, he is already confirmed in his bachelor 
habits ; that he likes his freedom from responsi- 
bility, his harmless, unprofitable daily routine, his 
favorite corner in his favorite club, his innocent 
philandering with various young women, married 
and unmarried. He may, at times, deceive the 
Lady Dolly into commiserating him and blaming 
herself as a thoughtless coquette, — but never 
for very long at a time. The whole thing is a 
sort of grown-up game of make-believe in which 
the players get a curious transitory, almost il- 
logical enjoyment in feigning broken hearts and 
blighted lives. And yet there is just enough truth 
underlying it all to suggest that Mr. Hope was 
capable of more serious work than he had yet done. 
There was, for instance, everywhere a pervading 
suggestion of the infinite number of contradictory 
motives and impulses that determine every human 
action, and the impossibility which every man and 



ANTHONY HOPE S39 

woman must admit to themselves of deciding just 
how much gladness and how much regret is entailed 
in every least little thing that they do. 

Almost without warning Mr. Hope proved that 
the vague promise of more serious work was well 
founded, by producing what, I think, the sober 
judgment of posterity will recognize as his most 
ambitious and most enduring work, Quisante, 
Alexander Quisante, from whom the volume takes 
its name, is not an Englishman either by birth or 
ancestry. He comes of antecedents almost un- 
known beyond the fact that they are a mixture of 
French and Spanish. With scanty means he 
comes, an absolute outsider, preparing to lay 
siege to the political and social world of London. 
In every way he finds himself handicapped. The 
foreordained course of education through which 
the English ruling classes pass as a matter of 
course and by which their prejudices and points 
of view are determined, has not been his privilege. 
In addition to this he lacks that inborn refinement 
which sometimes makes up for good breding and so- 
cial experience. His taste is often exceedingly bad ; 
his manner is alternately too subservient and 
too arrogant. Of the higher standards of morality 
he has no perception ; he is the typical adventurer, 
unscrupulous, insincere, monumentally selfish. 
But, to offset all this, his intellect is quite extraor- 
dinary; his brain is an instrument marvelously 



240 ANTHONY HOPE 

under control, and he uses it at his pleasure, to 
bring the lesser intellects about him under his 
dominion. Above all, he has the gift of eloquence ; 
and when he chooses to give full rein to his rhetori- 
cal powers, he can sway his audience at will, and 
thrill and sweep them with him through the whole 
gamut of human emotions. Of the men and women 
whom he meets, fully one-half are antagonized and 
repelled ; the others give him an unquestioning, al- 
most slavish devotion. But he has a personality 
which cannot leave negative results ; it must breed 
love or hate. 

The other character in the book who shares the 
central interest is Lady May Gaston, a woman 
who, by birth and training, participates in all those 
special privileges of rank and caste, all the tradi- 
tions of her order from which Quisante is shut 
out. There is another man, one in her own class, 
who would be glad to make her his wife. He is in 
all respects the sort of man whom she is expected to 
marry; and she is not wholly indifferent to him. 
But she meets Quisante, and, from the first, comes 
under the spell of his dominant personality. 
There is much in him from which she shrinks. His 
social ineptitude, his faculty for doing the wrong 
thing, or the right thing at the wrong time, makes 
her shudder. Although fascinated, she is not 
blinded. She sees his vulgarities, she questions his 
sincerity, she even doubts whether he is deserving 



ANTHONY HOPE S41 

of her respect. Nevertheless, the spectacular, 
flamboyant brilliancy of the man dominates her 
better judgment, and in spite of her relatives' re- 
monstrances, in spite of warnings from a member 
of Quisante's own family, she marries him, unable 
to resist the almost hypnotic spell cast over her 
by this man, who is something of a charlatan and 
something of a cad. The greater part of the book 
concerns itself with the story of the married life 
of this curiously ill-assorted couple ; of his success 
in the public eye; of her gradual disillusionment, 
which, bitter though it is in its completeness, finds 
her somewhat apathetic, unable to feel the resent- 
ment that she knows she ought, unable to acknowl- 
edge that she regrets her choice. This, indeed, is 
the most interesting aspect of the book, the domi- 
nation, mentally and morally, of a woman of rare 
sensitiveness and infinite possibilities by a man 
with whom companionship inevitably means de- 
terioration. 

The next of Mr. Anthony Hope's volumes, which 
personally appealed to the present writer, is en- 
titled A Servant of the Public, and is enjoyable 
chiefly because of the tantalizing witchery of its 
heroine. Ora Pinsent is a young actress, who has 
taken London by storm. She has a husband some- 
where, it is said, " whose name does not matter " ; 
indeed, it matters so little that it does not prevent 
her from letting Ashley Mead make ardent love to 



242 ANTHONY HOPE 

her, one Sunday afternoon, though all the while 
she " preserves wonderfully the air of not being 
responsible for the thing, of neither accepting 
nor rejecting, of being quite passive, of having it 
just happen to her." Thus with a single penstroke 
Mr. Hope has set the woman unmistakably before 
us. Throughout the book she practises the art 
of having things just happen to her, the art of 
dodging responsibility. With Ashley she drifts, 
dangerously one thinks, at first, until one sees how 
easily she checks his ardor when she chooses, with 
a nervous laugh, and a low whispered " Don't, 
don't make love to me any more now." She talks 
much solemn nonsense about her duty to the hus- 
band whose name does not matter, and about her 
intention to renounce Ashley, although one realizes 
that there is really nothing to renounce, nor ever 
will be. And when the time comes for her com- 
pany to leave London and start on their American 
tour, here also she plays the passive role, neither 
accepting nor rejecting. It is only when the weary 
months of her absence are over and she comes back 
as the wife of her leading man, that Ashley begins 
to see her as she really is ; only then that he feels 
her power over him has ceased ; only then that he 
can say, " I no longer love her, but I wish to God 
I did ! " It is not easy to convey an impression 
of a woman's charm, when it lies not in what she 
says, but in the way she says it; not in what she 



ANTHONY HOPE 243 

does, but in the way she does it. But this is pre- 
cisely what Anthony Hope has done triumphantly 
in his portraiture of Ora Pinsent, — Ora, with her 
upturned face, with its habitual expression of ex- 
pecting to be kissed, is one of the heroines 
in contemporary fiction that will not easily be for- 
gotten. 

Helena's Path deserves something more than a 
passing word of commendation, for it is an ex- 
cellent example of Mr. Hope's deftness in doing 
a very slight thing extremely well. It has an 
outward framework of actuality, the atmosphere 
of present day English country life ; yet into this 
he has infused a certain spirit of old-time chiv- 
alry and homage that gives to his whole picture 
something of the grace and charm of a Watteau 
landscape. The whole theme of the volume, which 
is scarcely more than a novelette, concerns itself 
with a right of way. The hero's estates lie some- 
where on the east coast of England ; but between 
his land and the strip of beach where he and his 
fathers before him have for generations been in 
the habit of bathing lies the property which the 
heroine has recently purchased; and, unaware of 
any right of way, she closes up the gate through 
which it is his habit to pass for his daily swim. He 
writes courteously but firmly, insisting on his right. 
She answers in the same spirit, emphatically 
denying it. He refuses to be robbed of his legal 



244* ANTHONY HOPE 

rights, even by a pretty woman; she refuses to 
yield, at a command, what she would have gra- 
ciously granted to a prayer. As neither side 
chooses to adopt legal measures, a state of mimic 
war ensues, in which he continues to invade the 
enemy's territory, while she continues to barricade 
and intrench. And all the while, although they 
have not once met face to face, each is quietly 
falling in love with the other, so that when finally 
honorable terms of peace are concluded, it is al- 
ready a foregone conclusion that the whole dainty 
little comedy will end with oaths of fealty and 
bestowal of favors worthy of a knight and a lady 
of the olden times. 

With the passage of years, however, the author 
of The Dolly Dialogues has tended to give us fewer 
and fewer of these dainty trifles and more and 
more of his serious and careful social studies. In 
this class belongs The Great Miss Driver, and 
there is no exaggeration in saying that since the 
publication of Quisante it is easily the biggest, 
best-rounded, and altogether worthiest book he 
has written. And yet, the first thing you are apt 
to think of is that the germ idea of the story goes 
straight back to The Dolly Dialogues; that in a 
superficial way, yes, and perhaps in a deeper way, 
too, there is a certain rather absurd similarity 
between them; just as though the author, having 
once made a pleasant little comedy out of a cer- 



ANTHONY HOPE 545 

tain situation, had ever since been turning over in 
his mind the possibility of using it in a bigger and 
more serious way, until eventually he evolved the 
present volume. Not that Jennie Driver, heiress 
to Breysgate Priory, bears any close resemblance 
to Lady Mickleham beyond the very feminine de- 
sire for conquest, — any more than the Mr. Austin 
of the one story is a close relative of Mr. Carter 
in the other. The resemblance lies in this, that 
both stories are told in the first person by the 
man who in his secret heart loves the woman of 
whom he writes, but knows that because he is 
poor, because he has the natural instinct of an old 
bachelor, because, also, she has given her heart 
elsewhere, he must remain content to look upon 
her joys and sorrows in the capacity of a 
friend, and not that of a lover. To this ex- 
tent The Great Miss Driver may be defined 
as The Dolly Dialogues rendered in a different 
tempo. 

Yet, such a definition gives no hint of the 
strength, the variety, the vital interest of this 
story. In the character of Jennie Driver Mr. Hope 
has given us a woman whose ruling passion is to 
hold sway, to fascinate and bend to her will every 
one who comes within her sphere. And because 
of this desire she can never bear to lose the al- 
legiance of any man, no matter how mean and 
unworthy he has proved himself; and herein lies 



246 ANTHONY HOPE 

the source of her life's tragedy. She is not con- 
tent to be merely the richest woman in the county, 
to play the part of Lady Bountiful, and build 
memorials and endow institutions with fabulous 
sums ; she wants also to be a social leader with 
undisputed right to take precedence over all the 
other ladies of the community, — and this she could 
do if she married Lord Fillingford, whom she re- 
spects, and who badly needs her fortune; but 
not if she should marry Leonard Octon, big, 
brusque, rather brutal, who is cut by the whole 
county, and whom she happens to love. It is a 
rather unique situation in fiction for a woman to 
be forced into publicly slighting the one man on 
earth that she cares for; still more unique for a 
woman who is pledged to marry one man to be 
secretly meeting the other man, and thus atoning 
for deliberately cutting him whenever they meet in 
public. And, surely, it was a rather audacious 
thing for Mr. Hope to attempt to make us feel 
that in spite of her double-dealing Jennie Driver 
is a rather big and fine and splendid sort of 
woman; that she would have kept faith with Fill- 
ingford had he been big enough to trust her when 
appearances were heavily against her ; and that in 
defying convention and scandalizing the little 
world she lives in by fleeing with Octon to Paris, 
she is doing the one big, brave, inevitable act. 
Yet, that is precisely what the author does sue- 



ANTHONY HOPE 247 

ceed in making us feel ; and when because Fate in- 
tervenes and wrecks the last chance of Jennie's 
happiness through the death of Octon, we not 
only sympathize with her bitterness toward the 
narrow-minded social circle that had forced her 
lover into exile, but we also glory with her in the 
big, carefully planned and altogether adequate re- 
venge by which she forces the county to pay tardy 
homage to the name of Octon. 

Notwithstanding the statement made at the be- 
ginning of this chapter, to the effect that Mr. An- 
thony Hope does not write problem novels, the 
volume entitled Mrs. Maxon Protests comes 
critically near the border-line. Mrs. Maxon is sim- 
ply one more young woman who has discovered 
marriage to be something vastly different from 
what she had imagined ; and her difficulty is of the 
variety which she regards as almost humiliatingly 
commonplace — namely, incompatibility. Her hus- 
band happens to be one of those narrow, self- 
satisfied, dictatorial men, with old-fashioned ideas 
about women in general and a rooted conviction 
that a man has a high moral responsibility for his 
wife's conduct and must mould her in all fashions 
to his own way of thinking. Mrs. Maxon bears the 
strain for five years ; then she consults a lawyer. 
She learns that while she cannot get a divorce in 
England, she can leave her husband and he cannot 
force her to come back. At the time of their 



248 ANTHONY HOPE 

separation, or to be more accurate, her desertion 
of him — for Maxon refuses to take the matter 
seriously — there is no other man in her life; but 
in the weeks that follow during which she stays at 
the country home of some friends with lax ideas of 
life and a houseful of curious and often irregular 
people, she suddenly surprises herself by falling in 
love with a certain Godfrey Ledstone and promptly 
scandalizes society by eloping with him openly and 
unashamed. The rest of the book traces, with a 
clear-sightedness that Mr. Hope has not always 
shown in his books, the subsequent career of a 
woman who thinks that by the force of her own 
example she can bring the whole world over to her 
way of thinking. He does not spare us any of her 
disillusions, her humiliations, her heartache and 
loneliness. But through it all she is learning, 
strangely and cruelly learning, much that is exceed- 
ingly good for her. She is learning, for instance, 
that charity and sympathy and understanding are 
often found where least expected. She is learning, 
too, that there are many other standards in this 
world as well as her own and that they are just 
as reasonable and perhaps nobler. She learns 
that one of the best men she has ever had the 
good fortune to meet, loving her, pitying her, 
utterly disapproving of her, would nevertheless 
have made her his wife in spite of the scandal that 
had preceded and followed her divorce — but for 



ANTHONY HOPE 249 

one reason: he is an army officer, and a woman 
with a taint upon her name would lower the social 
tone of his regiment and be in some degree a 
menace to the moral tone of the younger set. It 
is a temptation to analyze at some length the 
separate episodes of this rather unusual book 
throughout the years while Mrs. Maxon is slowly 
finding her way out of the quagmire of her own 
making into a belated peace and happiness. Yet, 
after all, what the book stands for is so admirably 
summed up in the concluding paragraph that one 
cannot do it a greater service than to close with 
one brief quotation. It is a satisfaction to find a 
book written upon this theme which, while recog- 
nizing that there is much to be said on both sides, 
shows neither vindictiveness toward the woman nor 
a misplaced championship that would exalt her 
into a martyr. 

In the small circle of those with whom she had 
shared the issues of destiny she had unsettled much; 
of a certainty she had settled nothing. Things were 
just as much in solution as ever; the welter was not 
abated. Man being imperfect, laws must be made. 
Man being imperfect, laws must be broken or ever 
new laws will be made. Winnie Maxon had broken 
a law and asked a question. When thousands do the 
like, the Giant, after giving the first comers a box 
on the ear, may at last put his hand to his own and 
ponderously consider. 



250 ANTHONY HOPE 

Such are the volumes chosen as a matter of per- 
sonal preference, out of the generous series that 
Mr. Hope has so industriously turned out, during 
a score of years. Another reader's choice might 
be different, and who shall say whether it would 
not be as well justified? Because, the first duty of 
a public entertainer is to entertain ; and, taking 
this for a criterion, the most that any one can say 
of his own knowledge is, such-and-such volumes 
have entertained me. It is obvious that Mr. Hope's 
own preference is for his more serious work, that 
with the passage of years he has grown more will- 
ing to allow the books of his romantic period to 
fade from sight. Yet, by doing this, he challenges 
a harder competition, a stricter measurement 
against a host of rivals. There has been no one to 
give us a second Prisoner of Zenda, excepting Mr, 
Hope himself, — notwithstanding that many an- 
other writer has tried his best. But it would be 
easy to name a dozen contemporary novelists who 
could give us the annals of another Servant of the 
People, or chronicle some further Intrusions of 
Peggy, — and one or two who, perhaps, could do it 
better. Mr. Hope is not one of the great novelists 
of his generation; but he is never mediocre, and 
even in his uninspired moments never dull. His 
Prisoner of Zenda and his Dolly Dialogues were 
both gems of the first water ; his Quisante certainly 
suffers nothing by comparison with George Gis- 



ANTHONY HOPE 251 

sing's Charlatan, separated from it by barely a 
year. As a chronicler of English manners he is 
certainly of rather more importance than Mr. E. 
F. Benson or Mr. Maarten Maartens, although not 
in the same class with Galsworthy, Bennett, or 
W. H. Maxwell. He will be remembered, I think, 
somewhat as William Black and Marion Crawford 
are remembered, as having preserved a wholesome 
optimism, an unshaken belief in human nature, and 
as having done his part to keep the tone of the 
modern novel clean and wholesome. 



MAY SINCLAIR 

The difficulty which must be faced in attempting 
to write a critical estimate of the work of May 
Sinclair, considered as a whole, is that this is pre- 
cisely the way in which it refuses to be considered. 
Her novels are hopelessly, irremediably incom- 
mensurate; they have no common denominator; 
they reveal nothing in the way of a logical pro- 
gression, of mental or spiritual growth from book 
to book, from theme to theme; The Tysons, The 
Divine Fire, The Helpmate, the three conspicuous 
volumes of three separate periods, might, so far 
as any sequence in thought or method is concerned, 
be the product of three different brains, striving 
diversely towards three several artistic ideals. 
The first is merely a clever character study of an 
exceptional man and woman, whose union inevita- 
bly leads to tragedy ; the second is a prose epic of 
genius battling for recognition, a myriad-sided 
picture of modern life, flung before us with spend- 
thrift prodigality; the third is a deliberately cal- 
culated problem novel, in which the finer realities 
of speech and action are sacrificed at the shrine 
of the author's purpose. In certain qualities of 
253 




MAY SINCLAIR 



MAY SINCLAIR 253 

style, no doubt, it would be easy, if such proof 
were required, to show that as a matter of fact all 
the volumes which bear the signature of May Sin- 
clair actually have emanated from her pen. Cer- 
tain felicitous phrasings of description, certain 
luminous flashes of subtle understanding, leave the 
imprint of a distinctive hall-mark on all her writ- 
ings. It is not the faltering hand of the artist, 
but the difference in the nature and magnitude of 
the inspiration behind the work that has made her 
successive volumes so astonishingly uneven, so im- 
possible to measure one against another. 

The plain and unwelcome truth which forces 
itself home with obstinate persistence, in propor- 
tion as one studies Miss Sinclair's literary produc- 
tions, is that for the purposes of serious criticism, 
she is the author of just one book. Her other 
volumes are full of interesting promise; The Di- 
vine Fire is big with achievement; her other vol- 
umes are written from her head ; but The Divine 
Fire came at white heat from her very heart and 
soul. The very qualities that stamp it as of the 
first magnitude are many of them conspicuously 
absent alike from her earlier and subsequent books. 
In her recent work, especially, she tends more and 
more to speak as one having authority, and her 
theories of life persist in looming up larger than 
the specific human tale she has to tell; while the 
great triumph of The Divine Fire lies precisely in 



^54 MAY SINCLAIR 

the absence of any such intrusion on the author's 
part, in its splendid and unvarying impersonality. 
It was really quite curious, this sudden and be- 
wildering fruition of unsuspected genius. It came 
absolutely unheralded. There was nothing in its 
predecessors, nothing in the uneven ability of The 
Tysons or the more finished art of a less pre- 
tentious tale such as Superseded, that would give 
even a hint of the cycloramic sweep of treatment, 
the breadth of vision, the deep, comprehensive 
human sympathy of The Divine Fire, — just as, 
despite the lavish praise of her admirers, there is 
no promise in anything she has since done that she 
will ever again rise to similar heights, ever dupli- 
cate her masterpiece. Nor is there anywhere a 
hint that she has the ambition to attempt it. Hav- 
ing once achieved a novel of the epic type, vibrant 
with the surge of human passions, the turmoil of 
civic life, she seems content to fling aside the 
formula, reject the spacious canvas and bold, 
virile brush-stroke, and content herself with the 
subtler, more etching-like precision of intimate 
home portraiture, the secret infelicities of married 
life. Now in the treatment of these delicate prob- 
lems of sex, it seems, as I have had occasion to say 
elsewhere, in the chapter devoted to "Frank 
Danby," almost impossible for a woman writer to 
achieve the impersonal, scientific detachment of a 
surgeon presiding at a clinic; there is always 



MAY SINCLAIR 255 

either a self-conscious reticence, or else, what is 
worse, that courage of desperation which ends by 
blurting out the reluctant words with needless and 
startling frankness. In her ability to write of such 
matters with virile unconcern, " Frank Danby " 
stands unrivaled among the women writers of Eng- 
land. To the normal and healthy mind, there 
should be no more embarrassment in reading even 
the most outspoken passages of Pigs in Clover 
than there would be in reading, let us say, a stand- 
ard treatise on obstetrics. And this is precisely 
what Miss Sinclair, with far greater personal 
delicacy, cannot achieve. There are pages in The 
Tysons, The Helpmate and The Judgment of Eve 
in which the veil of intimate mysteries is snatched 
aside and human frailty so uncompromisingly 
labeled that the reader instinctively casts a con- 
scious glance around him, in order to be assured 
that he is alone. This is a feeling that has come 
to me a score of times in reading Miss Sinclair's 
books ; and the oddest thing of all is that there is 
just one volume that never for an instant casts 
even a shadow of this sort of sense of trespass- 
ing on forbidden ground, namely. The Divine Fire. 
And this is not because of any lack of boldness in 
theme, any cowardly closing of the eyes to the 
actualities of life; on the contrary, the book has 
that full share of human error and weakness that 
is inevitable in any cross-section of life, cut boldly 



256 MAY SINCLAIR 

and on a large scale. But because the book is con- 
ceived on so high a plane, because in fact it has 
around it a halo of the sacred fire, the sins of the 
flesh are dwarfed to their proper relative value as 
factors having their significance in the develop- 
ment of human destinies, not as something to be 
whispered, with innuendoes, from behind a fan. 

In order to see more plainly the gulf, both in 
workmanship and in ideas, that lies between The 
Divine Fire and all her other books, let us examine 
certain representative volumes of Miss Sinclair's 
earlier and later period somewhat briefly, reserv- 
ing a more detailed analysis of her crowning work 
for the last. Miss Sinclair's works have come to 
us in America in such chronological confusion that 
their proper sequence in time is still a matter of 
considerable confusion, among a large proportion 
of her readers. Audrey Craven, which, I under- 
stand, is, with the exception of some Essays in 
Verse, her earliest published volume, is also the 
most easily negligible. It has cleverness and a 
certain kind of humor ; and it relates, in a vein of 
light satire, the history of a young woman whose 
" long quest of the eminent and superlative " ends 
in the anti-climax of marriage with a nonentity ; a 
fundamentally insincere young woman, who misses 
her last chance of attaining her heart's desire, be- 
cause in a burst of frankness she confesses that 
once she had a terrible temptation: 



MAY SINCLAIR 257 

It came to me tHrough some one whom I loved — 
very dearly. I was ready to give up everything — 
everything, you understand — for him; and I would 
have done it, only — God was good to me. He made 
it impossible for me, and I was saved. But I am 
just as bad, just as guilty, as if he had let it happen. 

And because the man to whom she confesses 
has the narrowness of a certain kind of religious 
asceticism, and agrees with her that she is "just 
as guilty," they pass out of each other's lives. 

Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson, which in the Ameri- 
can edition suffered an unfortunate abbreviation 
of title, is, in spite of certain crudities, a book of 
much more serious import. Nevill Tyson is of 
plebeian birth, — his father kept a tailor shop at 
an early stage in his career, — and a cosmopolitan 
by education. He has lived largely by his wits, 
and seen much service in peace and in war, always 
just missing the achievement of fame or fortune. 
Suddenly, fate plays upon him the curious prank 
of forcing him into the position of country gentle- 
man, a role difficult of fulfilment for a man who 
has scant liking for the country and lacks certain 
essentials of gentle breeding. Now, if Mr. Nevill 
Tyson could have been content to do the expected 
thing, — expected, that is, in the narrow social cir- 
cles of Drayton Parva, — if he could have inter- 
ested himself in the famous orchid collection of his 
late uncle, old Tyson of Thorneytoft; and if he 



258 MAY SINCLAIR 

could have brought himself to marry a clever 
woman with an unassailable position, all might 
have gone well. But instead he chose to marry 
little Mollie Wilcox, a mere nobody with whom, 
scandal-mongers insisted, he had struck up an ac- 
quaintance in a public railway carriage, — but " an 
adorable piece of folly," none the less, " an illusion 
and a distraction from head to foot ; her beauty 
made a promise to the senses and broke it to the 
intellect." " My husband says I am the soul of in- 
discretion," she confesses blithely, while he, with 
more candor than good taste, says openly, " My 
wife has about as much intellect as a guinea-pig, 
and the consequence is that she is not only happy 
herself, but the cause of happiness in others." 
What neither Mr. Nevill Tyson, nor the narrow 
souls of Drayton Parva society, nor even Nevill's 
one intimate friend, Stanistreet, could understand, 
was that little Mrs. Nevill loved her husband with 
an all-consuming passion, that left no room for 
other emotions. She was unaware that Stanistreet 
was in love with her, unaware that Drayton Parva 
was all agog with malevolent gossip connecting 
their names. Stanistreet was to her simply her 
husband's friend, some one with whom she could 
talk of Nevill when he was absent, some one who 
had known Nevill before she had, and could have 
told her many episodes of his early life, — episodes 
which the poor little lady was mercifully spared 



MAY SINCLAIR 259 

from hearing. As for Nevill, a man who never in 
his life before had known what it was to care for 
a woman, he was for the time being curiously and 
illogically happy, until after the birth of his son 
and heir. And at this point in the story a para- 
graph occurs which deserves to be quoted at 
some length, because the subtle truth of it, the 
understanding of a certain type of man by no 
means uncommon, is almost uncanny on the part 
of a young woman in the early course of her 
second book. It brings back to mind analogous 
pages in that quite remarkable volume by Edouard 
Rod, Le Sense de la Yie: 

Tyson had not the least objection to Stanistreet 
or Sir Peter and the rest of them, they were welcome 
to stare at his wife as much as they pleased; but he 
was insanely jealous of this minute masculine thing 
that claimed so much of her attention. He began 
to have a positive dislike to seeing her with the child. 
There was a strain of morbid sensibility in his nature, 
and what was beautiful to him in a Botticelli Ma- 
donna, properly painted and framed, was not beauti- 
ful — to him— in Mrs. Nevill Tyson. He had the 
sentiment of the thing, as I said, but the thing itself, 
the flesh and blood of it, was altogether too much for 
his fastidious nerves. 

So, in order to hold her husband's love, that she 
feels is slipping from her, Mrs. Tyson sacrificed 



260 MAY SINCLAIR 

her child. Weaned too soon, and intrusted to an 
incompetent nurse, it promptly and very naturally 
died;, and when the mother reappeared in the 
village, showing a " hard, tearless face," all Dray- 
ton Parva " was alive to the fact that Mrs. Nevill 
Tyson was an unnatural mother." Up to this 
point, the book is an admirable little study of an 
ill-assorted marriage, made hopeless from the start 
by a man's monumental selfishness and the med- 
dling of scandal-loving neighbors. But what fol- 
lows is too violent, too extreme, too needlessly 
cruel; it lacks the restraint that is the key-note 
of good art. That Nevill is fundamentally in- 
capable of remaining true to any woman is made 
sufficiently obvious ; but that after the death of her 
child he should take his wife to London and then 
slip away, vanish from sight, leaving her alone and 
friendless, in the midst of her grief, is a little 
harder to accept. And when Stanistreet takes 
advantage of her loneliness to ingratiate himself 
by offerings of flowers, theater tickets, luncheons 
and dinners, and she naively accepts them all, be- 
cause so long as Stanistreet is with her, she feels 
that she " has not quite lost Nevill," it seems in- 
consistent with the husband's character and with 
his deep understanding of women, that he should 
suddenly return, and, finding his friend with her, 
brutally accuse her of infidelity. Then comes the 
night when Nevill, after drinking too freely, causes 



MAY SINCLAIR 261 

a lamp to overturn, and his wife rescues him, at the 
cost of scars which destroy her beauty forever. 
There are a few brief weeks when the man thinks 
that he can rise above himself and repay her sacri- 
fice with a lasting devotion ; but the daily sight of 
that disfigured face is more than his " fastidious 
nerves " can bear ; so he raises a volunteer company 
and sets off for the Soudan, where he dies a hero's 
death, after having slain his wife by his desertion 
as surely as though he had put a bullet through 
her heart. The trouble with the book is that it is 
overdrawn ; the woman is a little more than human, 
the man a little less. The end is melodrama, the 
"brutal, jubilant lust of battle," and a "wooden 
cross in the shifting sands." It is amazing how 
readily an obsequious bullet, at the author's beck 
and nod, consents to cut short a misspent life at 
the psychological moment. 

It is pleasant to turn from the amateurishness 
of The Tysons to a much more modest bit of work 
which, nevertheless, in its own way is very nearly 
flawless. There is so much simple pathos, so much 
genuine human nature in Superseded that only a 
writer of the first rank could have wrought such 
deft effects of light and shade from such slight ma- 
terial. It is merely the humble tragedy of a timid, 
colorless, inefficient school-teacher whom Fate 
originally thrust into a niche that she could never 
adequately fill; and then, after she has spent her 



262 MAY SINCLAIR 

strength for years in the pitiful struggle to do 
what is demanded of her, unexpectedly thrusts 
her out to an old age of helplessness and want. 
The humble little woman's unspoken romance, the 
harmless dreams which she weaves around the 
young physician who befriends her and who has 
already given his heart to another and younger 
teacher, — the one destined, as the irony of life wills 
it, to supersede her, — is the most delicate part of a 
story which eludes analysis, and gives it its chief 
charm. It would be difficult to point out another 
story in English which portrays with such quiet 
strength the pathos of inefficient old age, the 
anguish of discovering that one has outlived one's 
usefulness. 

Superseded originally appeared just three years 
before The Divine Fire, the same interval of time 
that intervened before the appearance of Miss 
Sinclair's next novel. The Helpmate. Towards this 
volume I must confess to an antagonism incom- 
patible with the judicial impartiality of criticism. 
It is a well-intentioned book, built upon an inter- 
esting thesis ; but, because its chief characters are 
faultily conceived, it is an offensive book as well as 
an unconvincing one. With the central theme, that 
the narrow-mindedness of the so-called good 
woman has been the moral ruin of many a man, as 
surely as though she were a bad woman, I have 
no quarrel. I simply fail to see that in the present 



MAY SINCLAIR 263 

volume Miss Sinclair has chosen a case that proves 
her contention. Here very briefly are the salient 
facts: Anne Fletcher has married Walter Ma- 
jendie chiefly because she believes he is "good." 
The fact that he is not " good," that, on the con- 
trary, the episode of his entanglement with Lady 
Cayley is still, after seven years, an unforgotten 
local scandal, is a matter which Walter's invalid 
sister, Edith, has promised to break to Anne be- 
fore the wedding ; but Edith fails to keep her prom- 
ise, and Anne's enlightenment comes with cruel 
suddenness through a bit of gossip overheard on 
her honeymoon. Now, Anne is a young woman who 
is physically cold and unresponsive, but capable of 
a religious exaltation that is almost sensual. 
When her belief in Walter's " goodness " is shat- 
tered, she seriously questions whether his lapse 
from virtue, seven years ago, does not release her 
from her obligations as a wife, but finally takes 
great credit for deciding that although " things 
can never be as they were between them," she will 
nevertheless " try to be a good wife to him." Now, 
up to this point, wie have good material for an 
interesting and not too unusual situation. The 
woman with an exaggerated conscience and a dor- 
mant temperament, the woman who, knowing noth- 
ing about the masculine nature, demands that he 
shall be judged and disciplined according to her 
standards, is a sufficiently common type ; and when 



264 MAY SINCLAIR 

she does not happen to marry her rector, or the 
curate or Sunday-school superintendent, it is more 
than likely that, from sheer force of contrast, her 
choice will be a man whose philosophy of life is 
more indulgent than her own. The trouble with 
Miss Sinclair is that she has very much overdrawn 
her element of contrast. Walter Majendie is not 
m.erely more indulgent toward himself and his fel- 
low men, — and women, — but he is altogether of 
coarser clay, a man lacking in the finer sense of 
honor, a man who is not altogether a " bounder," 
nor wholly a cad, yet possessing a kinship to both. 
He has an ill-timed levity, — an " appalling flip- 
pancy," is her name for it, — that leads him into 
disastrous irreverence. When, on her birthday, he 
offers her an antique silver crucifix, and she hesi- 
tates to accept it, because " to accept that gift, of 
all gifts, was to lay her spirit under obligation to 
him," he is so lacking in intelligence, so hopelessly 
out of touch with her mood, as to ask : 

** Are you not going to take it, then ? " 

** I don't know. Do you realize that you are giving 
me a very sacred thing? " 

" I do." 

" And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary 
present? " 

He lowered his eyes. " I didn't think you'd want 
to wear it in your hair, dear." 



MAY SINCLAIR 265 

When on another occasion, he accompanies her 
to Lenten Service, he asks her, as they emerge 
into the open air, " Did you like it? " 

He spoke as if to the child she seemed to him 
now to be. They had been playing together, pretend- 
ing they were two pilgrims bound for the Heavenly 
City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice 
game. He nursed the exquisite illusion that this time 
he had pleased her by playing too. 

But his lack of reverence, his fundamental in- 
ability to respect her mood, even if he could not 
share her faith, is as nothing compared with his 
extraordinary acceptance of social complications 
that any man of refined perceptions would have 
realized to be intolerable. It is his misfortune, if 
not his fault, that his. chosen circle of friends is 
a bit lower in the social scale than that of his 
wife. To complicate matters further, one or two 
of his closest friends are men whose past, and pres- 
ent, too, are not beyond reproach. They are men 
whom Anne's sanctimonious little circle rigorously 
exclude. Yet, considering that one of them in par- 
ticular, a certain Mr. Gorse, is the man whom her 
sister-in-law, Edith Majendie, would have married, 
but for the obscure spinal trouble that came upon 
her ten years ago, that Edith knows Gorse's human 
weaknesses, and, like the big-souled woman that 
she is, understands and forgives them, and that 



266 MAY SINCLAIR 

the only real joy Gorse knows is his occasional 
calls at the Majendie home, — considering all this, 
it would have been more magnanimous if Anne 
could have brought herself to extend a little Chris- 
tian charity and show a simple civility to her hus- 
band's friend. Instead, she refuses to receive 
either Gorse or any of the circle to which he be- 
longs ; and, as her husband sees nothing incon- 
gruous in having them at the house for dinner on 
an average of once a week, the wife finds herself 
driven into begging the hospitality of one or an- 
other of her own friends, in order to avoid meet- 
ing her husband's guests. People simply do not 
do such things ; and one does not know which to 
wonder at the more, the husband who would thus 
force his wife away from home, or the guests who 
would accept invitations in her absence. But 
stranger things are to come. Lady Cayley, the 
woman who seven years ago almost wrecked Ma- 
jendie's life, and was bought off at such a heavy 
cost that Majendie has not yet been able to pay 
back the friend from whom he borrowed it, unex- 
pectedly returns to town, is forgiven and received 
by her relatives, and actually encounters her for- 
mer lover and his wife at an afternoon tea. A man 
with decent instincts would have been keenly alive 
to the humiliation such a meeting inflicted on his 
wife, even though she was spared a personal intro- 
duction. But Walter tactlessly allows himself to 



MAY SINCLAIR 267 

chat and laugh with Lady Cayley for some min- 
utes ; and when he and his wife are home once more 
and she very naturally demands that he shall give 
up visiting at houses where he is likely to meet his 
former mistress, he stares in amazement and re- 
fuses : 

" I can't promise anything of the sort. Heaven 
knows how long she is going to stay." 

** I ought not to have to explain that by counte- 
nancing her you insult me. You should see it for 
yourself." 

" I can't see it. In the first place, with all due 
regard to you, I don't insult you by countenancing 
her, as you call it. In the second place, I don't 
countenance her by going to other people's houses. 
If I went to her house, you might complain. She 
hasn't got a house, poor lady." 

The man is hopeless. That is the book's chief 
and pervading weakness. The author wants us to 
espouse her hero's cause, and instead, with almost 
everything he says or does, he alienates our sym- 
pathy. Of course, a marriage so ill-assorted is 
bound to turn out disastrously ; but the stumbling- 
block will not be a youthful error long since ex- 
piated ; it will be the intolerable contact with little 
daily vulgarisms, the hourly verbal clumsiness, the 
monumental incapacity to understand the finer and 
subtler temperament of the woman. The under- 



268 MAY SINCLAIR 

lying idea of the book is undeniably big ; the situa- 
tion at the end of ten years of marriage that has 
been a mockery of the word is poignant with 
tragedy. The inevitable has happened ; after the 
birth of her child the wife has tacitly claimed her 
freedom ; the husband has been patient, — but 
patience has its limits, and for the last three of 
these ten years there has been another woman, es- 
tablished in a snug little country house, who does 
her best to make up to him for the emptiness and 
disillusion of his home life. Then comes a night 
when his only child, a frail little creature with a 
weak heart, awakes from a vivid dream, declaring 
her father dead, and cries and sobs ceaselessly, re- 
fusing to be comforted, — ^until the strain is too 
much for the feeble heart, and she sobs herself 
into her final rest. To the wife there comes, simul- 
taneously with this loss, the knowledge of the other 
woman, the knowledge that it was because he had 
gone to see that other woman that he had been ab- 
sent when his presence might have saved the child's 
life, — in short, as her disordered fancy conceives 
it, that he is virtually the child's murderer. And 
this she tells him brutally, lashing him with her 
scorn. Now, an absurd charge of this sort is not 
in itself sufficient to bring on an attack of apo- 
plexy; but the man has been under a strain for 
years ; he is cut to the heart by the irremediable 
nature of the double loss. And as he lies hovering 



MAY SINCLAIR 269 

between life and death, the woman has long hours 
in which to learn her own narrowness, long hours 
in which to repeat over and over the words of Lady, 
Cayley, whom she scorned and who has ventured to 
tell her the truth: 

" Look at it this way. He has kept all his mar- 
riage vows — except one. You have broken all yours 
— except one. None of your friends will tell you 
that. That's why / tell you. Because I'm not a good 
woman, and I don't count." 

It is because this situation is so big in possi- 
bilities, and the principle involved so vital an issue 
in hundreds of marriages, that it is hard to pardon 
Miss Sinclair her amazing lack of perception in 
blurring the issue by the needless complications of 
a special case, and narrowing down to a mere lack 
of breeding a question that ought to have hinged 
upon the relative magnitude of two souls. 

The Immortal Moment, while far slighter in 
scope and significance than The Helpmate, is 
artistically a much finer piece of workmanship. It 
is seldom that a story brings to the reviewer such 
a sense of impotence to do it justice within the 
space of a single paragraph. One can, of course, 
assert its admirable technique, its rare truth of 
characterization; its logical analytical develop- 
ment ; but mere assertion, no matter how emphatic, 



270 MAY SINCLAIR 

lacks convincing power. What Miss Sinclair's 
book deserves is a detailed and painstaking anal- 
ysis of the kind that takes much time and space. 
For, after all, stripped to its bare skeleton, The 
Immortal Moment seems a curiously inadequate 
framework upon which to fashion a story of any 
considerable magnitude. It amounts to little more 
than this: Kitty Tailleur is a sort of English 
Dame aux Camelias, who is spending a few weeks 
in a fashionable hotel at an English seaside resort. 
Owing to the absence of the man whose pocket- 
book pays her bills, it is not strange that a clean- 
souled, big-hearted, honorable nature such as Rob- 
ert Lucy, meeting her in the casual way in which 
one meets fellow-guests at a hotel, should mistake 
her for what she is not; and, supplementing his 
mistake by a graver one, should fall in love with her 
and ask her to be his wife and a second mother to 
his orphan child. Kitty Tailleur is not in the least 
an idealized character; she is quite frankly pic- 
tured with the faults and limitations of her class — 
the love of show, the thirst for admiration, the 
insincerity, the imperious craving for emotions. 
But it happens that for the first time in her life 
she has learned the meaning of an honest, disin- 
terested love. Had she not loved Robert Lucy 
she would have run the risk of future discovery ; 
but because of this love she cannot bring herself 
to conceal her unworthiness from him. And after 



MAY SINCLAIR ^71 

she has owned the truth and he has decided that 
for his child's sake, if not for his own, marriage 
between them is impossible, she not only acquiesces 
in his verdict, but adds to it by the supreme sacri- 
fice of her " immortal moment," the seal of finality 
that comes with death. But the art of this story 
depends far less upon the substance than upon the 
manner of the telling. Throughout the greater 
portion of it the reader knows no more than the 
man who loves her what manner of woman she is. 
We hear the current gossip of the hotel corridors, 
the jealous slurs of women, the over-bold admira- 
tion of men, the stanch support of the few who 
really like her. In other words, the reader is 
placed in a position to see Kitty Tailleur from the 
standpoint of Robert Lucy and to hear and sur- 
mise what Robert Lucy might have heard and sur- 
mised — with this advantage, however, that the 
average reader is somewhat more worldly-wise 
than Mr. Lucy, and therefore in a position to dis- 
cover for himself the truth which the lover scarcely 
credits, even after hearing it with brutal frank- 
ness from the woman's own lips. 

Yet nothing that has been said in the preceding 
pages alters the fact that Miss Sinclair first be- 
came a figure of importance in contemporary fic- 
tion upon the appearance of The Divine Fire, and 
that without it her importance to-day would be, if 
not negligible, at least greatly diminished. In that 



272 MAY SINCLAIR 

one book at least she arose to rare heights. It is 
one of those big, many-sided, kaleidoscopic books 
which paint metropolitan life, the good and the 
bad together, with bold, sweeping brush-strokes, — 
the sort of book which it is almost as hard for a 
woman to achieve as it is for a woman to compose 
a symphony. The impression that you bring away 
from The Divine Fire is, first of all, an impression 
of a multitude of human beings, and at the same 
time not an impression of a crowd, — because, in a 
crowd, few faces stand out distinct from the rest, 
while in The Divine Fire there is a host of faces, 
every one of which you recognize because they are 
so carefully and admirably individualized. The 
picture is painted on a wide canvas ; and there is 
no mistaking the assured touch with which the 
seamy side of journalistic and Bohemian London 
are flung before us. It is the London of Grub 
Street and Torrington Square; the London of 
newspaper and magazine offices, of old bookshops 
and second-rate lodging houses, of cheap theaters 
and cheaper music halls. Back of this tawdry and 
penurious under-world we glimpse, faintly at first, 
then more and more clearly, paths leading upward 
and onward, into the clearer, more spacious realm 
of art and letters, fame and fortune. More spe- 
cifically, the book is the life history of two men; 
the one, an impeccable classicist, a stern, uncom- 
promising censor of public taste in literature and 



MAY SINCLAIR 273 

art; the other, a man lacking in breeding, in 
culture, in all the essentials of a gentleman and 
a scholar, but endowed with one heaven-born gift, 
the gift of poetry, — and the history of these two 
lives is, on the one hand, the sale of a birthright 
for a mess of pottage, and on the other, the 
apotheosis of a poet. Savage Keith Rickman is a 
true Cockney in every bone and fiber ; he was born 
and bred amid the dust of old books ; and even the 
classical course in the University of London could 
not eradicate certain vulgarisms of habit and 
speech and manner, could not make him certain of 
putting his aitches unerringly in the right place. 
Furthermore, he is handicapped by an instinct for 
sharp bargains, inherited from his trickster father, 
old Isaac Rickman. In short, he is not a gentle- 
man, in the accepted meaning of the term, — but 
whether he is something a little less than a gen- 
tleman, or something a little more, is a question 
which those who know him best are not in undue 
haste to answer. Curiously enough, in the soul of 
this apparently insignificant Cockney clerk a 
spark of the divine flame is smoldering. It has al- 
ready flared up once or twice, in a burst that is 
almost genius in certain audacious Saturnalia^ and 
in the opening acts of a wonderful symbolic drama, 
Helen in Leuce. Yet the flame, even at its bright- 
est, has not as yet leaped very high above the 
earth. His Cockney streak is still uppermost ; he 



274t MAY SINCLAIR 

looks upon the throngs of women, who nightly 
frequent Piccadilly Circus, abstractedly as " a 
luminous, passionate nocturne of the streets " ; his 
ideal of womanhood has not risen above the level 
of Poppy Grace, a very ordinary little variety 
actress, who has sung her way into popular favor 
with cheap music hall ditties, and twirls blithely 
on twinkling toes. Young Rickman makes her 
acquaintance through the informal medium of ad- 
joining balconies; and the nature of their friend- 
ship is conveyed in terms which, although euphe- 
mistic, are unmistakable. But a momentous day 
comes when Rickman is sent into the country to 
catalogue and appraise a priceless old library, 
which his father, through unscrupulous dealings, 
is about to acquire for a mere song. Until he 
arrives at the old hall, he has never heard of the 
existence of Lucia Harden, whose father owns the 
library; nor has he been aware of the peculiar 
complication regarding the library itself. Lucia 
is one of those rare women with a love for books, 
and a passion for classic learning. It is her own 
idea to have this library catalogued, and she 
means to pay the cost out of certain private 
funds, and have the catalogue ready as a surprise 
for her father, when he returns from the Con- 
tinent. But it happens that Sir Frederick Har- 
den, unknown to his daughter, has lost a very 
substantial part of his fortune at Monte Carlo, 



MAY SINCLAIR 275 

and has mortgaged his library for less than quar- 
ter its value, and old Isaac Hickman has secured 
an option from the mortgagee. Now, Lucia Har- 
den, beautiful, cultured, and of fine old race, is 
the first good, pure woman that Keith Rickman 
has ever known, and she dawns upon his bewildered 
senses as a herald of a new life, an inspiration that 
will lead him upward to heights unguessed. Had 
he been a gentleman, instead of something less, — 
or something more, — Rickman would have known 
at once the impossibility of remaining at Harden 
Hall, working day and night, side by side with 
Lucia Harden, and aware all the time that he is 
in a certain sense helping to defraud her. When 
he finally does realize what his duty is, and pre- 
pares to tell her the truth, he is too late; her 
father has died suddenly, at Cannes, the mortgage 
has been foreclosed, and the Harden library has 
passed into the greedy grasp of Rickman the elder. 
This sequence of events, bringing with them a tem- 
porary belief on the part of Lucia Harden that 
Keith has been guilty of unpardonable duplicity, 
although it causes a long estrangement between 
them, is the beginning of the poet's regeneration, 
his emancipation from his bondage, his gradual 
conquest over heredity and environment and his 
earlier self. The first step is his permanent break 
with his father, his departure from the classical 
section of the old book shop, where he has so long 



276 MAY SINCLAIR 

been a familiar figure, and his appraisal accepted 
as the final word. Instead, he enters on the pre- 
carious path of journalism, picking up a pittance 
here and there for a sonnet, an editorial, a para- 
graph of criticism, and emigrating from second 
floor front to third floor back, thence to a garret, 
and then back again to second, in accordance 
with the weekly ebb and flow of fortune. 

Meanwhile there is a second leading figure in 
the book, who is glimpsed but seldom during the 
earlier chapters, because his social position makes 
him a stranger to the sphere in which Rickman has 
hitherto moved. Horace Jewdwine is an Oxford 
Don, developing into a London journalist. " You 
divined that the process would be slow ; there was 
no unseemly haste about Jewdwine." Academic 
is a pale, inefficient word to apply to Jewdwine, 
to his critical taste, to his manner of speech, his 
written prose. He exhales the higher culture as 
he moves ; his conversation is as formally classic as 
an Elgin marble. His highest ambition is to found 
a review of literature and art that shall be im- 
peccable, the recognized court of last resort in 
criticism. Now, it happens that Jewdwine is own 
cousin of Lucia Harden, that he dreams in a 
vague, noncommittal way of one day marrying her, 
provided he can bring himself to sacrifice his 
bachelor freedom; and meanwhile, being aware of 
Rickman's interest in Lucia and of their tem- 



MAY SINCLAIR 277 

porary estrangement, it suits his purpose to 
manoeuver to keep them apart and to salve his 
own conscience by offering Rickman the position 
of sub-editor on his newly founded review, The 
Museion. To trace the subsequent steps by which 
the Cockney poet climbs upward and onward, 
sacrificing one worldly prospect after another, in 
his one fixed purpose to refine the pure gold of 
his own soul, to redeem his honor, and through 
slaving drudgery, sickness and starvation, win 
back the library he was instrumental in helping to 
steal, and lay it at Lucia Harden's feet as a 
tangible evidence of atonement, — to tell all this 
in detail would mean to rewrite inadequately a 
story already so superbly written that one reads 
it with an eagerness that is almost pain, all uncon- 
scious of its most unusual and formidable length. 
And Jewdwine, too, and his slow but inevitable 
degeneration, form a chapter too extensive to 
epitomize in detail. Here again is a superb piece 
of work, — merciless, too, in the incisive irony of 
the picture it draws of a man's self-deception, his 
almost unconscious yielding to the pressure of ex- 
pediency, until he is almost the only person left 
who is unaware that his review is hopelessly com- 
mercialized and his own critical opinions a mar- 
ketable commodity. And in the end, when he looks 
into his own soul and awakes to a realization of 
its pettiness, he has not manhood enough left to be 



278 MAY SINCLAIR 

generous and wish his rival god-speed in his wooing 
of the woman Jewdwine has forever lost, — but in- 
stead he must play a dog-in-the-manger's part, 
and by a dastardly trick try to block the marriage 
between Keith and Lucia, a trick that falls to the 
ground and sputters out impotently, because the 
poet's soul has reached that rare height in which 
love is refined of all dross and self is obliterated. 
These are some of the things that Miss Sinclair 
has achieved in this rather wonderful book. And 
she has done one thing more, — and as a sheer mat- 
ter of craftsmanship, the most wonderful of all; 
she has shown us a genius, one of the finest and 
rarest sort, and she has convinced us that he is all 
she claims for him; she has succeeded in making 
him plausible, she has even ventured upon the su- 
preme audacity of showing us fugitive specimens 
of his verse, and yet escapes an anti-climax. Sav- 
age Keith Rickman lives so firmly in our memory 
as an English poet of the first magnitude that it 
would not be at all surprising, indeed, it would 
seem in a way a merited tribute to the novelist's 
genius, if more than one absent-minded reader 
should search for the name of Rickman in anthol- 
ogies of English verse. 

These are the reasons why it is difficult to dis- 
cuss Miss Sinclair's other volumes more than half- 
heartedly, why it has seemed best to omit some of 
them altogether from discussion. They suffer too 



MAY SINCLAIR 279 

much from contrast. One by one, they add their 
cumulative evidence to the growing conviction that 
The Divine Fire is likely to enjoy permanently its 
isolated splendor among Miss Sinclair's contribu- 
tions to fiction. 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 

With the single and obvious exception of Mr. 
Kipling, it would be difficult to cite any other con- 
temporary writer of English fiction who has at- 
tained such striking success as that of Mr. Alfred 
Ollivant in three forms of endeavor differing so 
widely as those represented severally by Bob, Son 
of Battle, Redcoat Captain and The Gentleman. 
To the host of friends whom he won by his strong 
and tender story of a dog who was a gentleman 
if a dog ever was one, it began to seem, as the 
3^ears went by, that Mr. Ollivant was destined to be 
numbered among the authors of a single book. 
And when a few years later a second dog story, 
Danny, was barely given to the public before being 
withdrawn by the author as a piece of work to 
which he could not give his sanction, the impres- 
sion was strengthened that he was not likely again 
to be heard from. Contrary to expectation, after 
another lengthy silence, he surprised his public 
by producing within the space of a single year two 
volumes that, each in its own way, stand very 
close to the elusive border-line of genius. One 
other volume, The Taming of John Blunt, subse- 




ALFRED OLLIVAXT 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 281 

quently found its way into print, and there is still 
another which, when the day of its publication 
arrives, is likely to bring its author high com- 
mendation as an interpreter of certain humble 
Cockney types and to win him comparison with 
analogous works from the pens of De Morgan and 
Galsworthy. 

There are some novelists, probably the majority 
of those who really count, from whose blunders 
almost as much may be learned as from their suc- 
cesses. It is possible to look back over their record 
and to see how, step by step, they learn to outgrow 
certain failings, to avoid certain errors, to do a 
particular kind of thing over again, and to do it 
better. Mr. Ollivant is not one of this class. He 
can do only the thing which, for the time being, 
holds him, heart and soul. When he blunders there 
is no such thing as going back and doing it over. 
He discards that particular type once for all, and 
passes on to something new, something in which 
his past achievements and failures have scant in- 
fluence one way or the other. For this reason 
there would be small profit in spending time or 
space upon the two volumes which are admittedly 
inferior work. The primary purpose of the pres- 
ent study is to justify the contention that Mr. 
Ollivant is one of the most original writers of his 
generation; and the best proof of this lies in the 
three volumes which are now to be successively ex- 



asa ALFRED OLLIVANT 

amined and among which it is difficult to award the 
palm for uniqueness. 

Of Boby Son of Battle, very nearly the last word 
has been said, not once, but many times, by other 
critics ; it is one of those rarely fortunate books re- 
garding which the verdict of criticism and of the 
general public coincided in giving it very nearly its 
just due. The animal story, if we include within 
this term the Beast Fable, is a type of fiction which 
has come down from the unrecorded darkness of 
antiquity; and through the skilled magic of Mr. 
Kipling, the type has taken a new lease of life in 
the Jungle Books and the Just-So Stories. But 
in these coldly practical days, when science is ruth- 
lessly elbowing the classics out of our universities, 
we have learned to make even our animal stories 
scientific ; and we have as a result the tales of Mr. 
Thompson-Seton, the best of which are zoological 
monographs, and the worst, good examples of that 
type of pseudo-psychology popularly known as the 
nature fake. Besides these two main divisions 
there is a wide-spread class of novel and short 
story, in which the chief character is a dog or a 
horse through whose eyes a certain series of human 
episodes are witnessed and a certain effect of 
irony, a certain criticism of life, is gained by ac- 
cepting the canine or equine point of view. Such 
books are of all periods and of all degrees of merit, 
from The Golden Ass of Apuleius to Ouida's Puck, 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 283 

from that widely popular piece of sentimentality, 
Black Beauty, to Richard Harding Davis's bit of 
real artistry, The Bar Sinister. And, of course, 
any one whose reading in fiction has been at all 
liberal will be able to cite many a story in which 
some dumb animal has played a more or less sig- 
nificant part. They range all the way from a 
casual intrusion such as that of Binkie, who was 
" an omen," in The Light That Failed, to Buck, 
who pretty nearly fills the whole canvas, in The 
Call of the Wild, But even with all these different 
types clearly in mind, there need be no hesitation 
in affirming that Mr. Ollivant's Boh, Son of Battle, 
is not merely the best realistic story of animal life, 
but the only one. While we read it, all others 
simply do not exist. 

The specific story of Owd Bob, the last of the 
Grey Dogs of Kenmure, and his life-long feud with 
Red Wullie, the Tailless Tyke, does not lend itself 
well to a brief retelling. So much of its strength 
lies in the careful etching-like detail, the soft grays 
and browns of lowering sky and far-stretching 
moor ; much, also, in the slow, persistent accumula- 
tion of traits of character, little miracles of ob- 
servation that by their progressive upbuilding give 
birth to a little group of dogs and of men that are 
perhaps more alive in their material existence of 
ink and paper, and more likely to go on living, 
than many another who actually moves and 



284 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

breathes. Of James Moore, the big, brawny, phleg- 
matic and long-suffering master of Bob, and of 
Adam M'Adam, the undersized, shrunken wisp of 
humanity, with the disposition of a devil in whom 
there still smolders a spark of tenderness, there is 
no purpose in speaking here at any length. The 
whole plot of the book is too thin, too skeleton- 
like to be set forth at second hand without danger 
of ruthlessly spoiling it. Viewed dispassionately, 
apart from the contagious magic of Alfred Olli- 
vant's matchless narrative, the whole thing nar- 
rows down to this : We have two sheep-dogs, each 
a prize-winner because of his peculiar prowess in 
driving his flock; each hating the other with a 
hatred controlled only by the respective attitudes 
of their masters ; and little by little the convic- 
tion spreads that one of these two dogs has been 
guilty of the one unpardonable crime a sheep-dog 
may commit, — that of killing sheep. A matter, 
you see, of a few throats opened, a few pounds of 
mutton spoiled for the market in a little jumping- 
ofF place on the world's surface ; a few farmers 
out of pocket, and, in the end, a village well rid of 
a bad dog. But, what Mr. Ollivant has actually 
done is so vastly different from all this : under his 
touch the outside world drops away and the 
spreading acres of farm and pasture under the 
shadow of the Muir Pike dominate the whole pic- 
ture. In the personalities of two dogs he has 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 285 

worked out certain eternal verities; has pictured 
over again the unending battle between good and 
evil, fought out in the blackness of night between 
the immensities of earth and sky. The big scene 
of the book, in which at last Red Wullie is caught, 
vampire-like, at his hideous feast, with the shud- 
dering, cowering flock standing as dumb witnesses, 
and Owd Bob looming up beside him like an aveng- 
ing fate, is beyond all praise in its tragic sim- 
plicity, superbly elemental, almost Homeric. It is 
no small task to take a couple of dogs and make 
them stand as symbols for the passions and aspira- 
tions of humanity; it is an even greater achieve- 
ment to take an isolated corner of Christendom, a 
gray, fog-haunted bit of moorland, and make it 
the center of the Universe, blotting out the rest, — 
and these things Mr. Ollivant has achieved with 
an almost epic dignity. 

Of the two books which equally with Boh, Son 
of Battle, merit detailed notice. Redcoat Captain, 
although one of the few really unique volumes 
which any one decade gives us, is perhaps the less 
apt to have its singular quality recognized. In- 
deed, to the indiff^erent glance of the average 
reader, the big print of its wide pages, the one- 
syllable flavor of its dialect, the Mother Goose at- 
mosphere of its illustrations, betokened merely one 
more attempt to meet the demand for holiday 
books for children, — and a none too successful at- 



286 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

tempt it turned out to be, according to the ex- 
perience of numerous misguided purchasers who 
found that somehow it failed to reach the intelli- 
gence of the kindergarten age. Of course, as a 
matter of fact, whether Mr. Ollivant himself was 
precisely aware of it or not, Redcoat Captain is 
not a book for children, but a sort of epitomized 
philosophy of life, deliberately written in the man- 
ner of Alice in Wonderland or the Just-So Stories; 
or, to say the same thing in another way, it con- 
tains the essence of the wisdom of childhood put up 
in portable doses for the adult. It is the uni- 
versal and perennial love story, told with the joy- 
ous irresponsibility of Grimm's Fairy Tales. It re- 
minds you, as above suggested, of the Just-So 
Stories and the next moment of Mr. Barrie's 
Little White Bird, and then again of no one in the 
world but Mr. Ollivant himself. A good many 
readers will doubtless frankly take issue with 
this opinion and lay the book aside in hopeless be- 
wilderment. Yet the effort to understand its ten- 
der symbolism is eminently worth while, not merely 
because the inherent romance of love and youth 
has seldom been treated with such freedom from 
all that is conventional, but because it contains 
the key to the right of entry into " That Country," 
the country of those who have learned to remain 
young in heart and to look upon life with the frank 
serenity of little children. The book merits a little 



ALFRED OLLIVANT ^87 

patient effort to understand it, and I urgently 
recommend some effort in its behalf. You will un- 
doubtedly read it at first in a state of dazed in- 
comprehension, telling yourself that if this is a 
book attuned to the understanding of childhood, 
you must suddenly have grown very old indeed. 
You read it a second time, and here and there you 
catch sudden sunlight flashes of meaning through 
the prevailing fog of shorthand phrasing ; but it 
takes at least three readings before you fully catch 
the spirit of it, and realize with a growing delight 
that Mr. Ollivant has succeeded in saying almost 
the last word on many of the deepest and tenderest 
relations of life, and, what is more, saying it in 
long primer type and a special nursery syntax in- 
vented for the occasion. 

Who else ever conceived of the possibility of 
breaking into a love story with the following ab- 
ruptness : " So, after waiting faithfully for days 
and days and days, they agreed they could 
wait no longer"? And who else would ever 
have had the delicious impudence of summing 
up the essential details in this stenographic 
fashion ; 

She was between ten and twenty; he was a little 
more. 

He was so tall that the Fellows called him Tiny; 
her name was Mabel, so they called her Baby. 



288 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

At this point a reviewer suddenly realizes once 
again the impossibility of measuring Mr. Ollivant's 
books after the ordinary standard. It is easy, 
no doubt, to point out many hidden meanings in 
Redcoat Captain, to show that it is an elaborate 
political satire, a verbal caricature of the British 
army. But its widest appeal will be exerted as an 
allegory of the first year of married life. Baby is 
by no means the first young wife who has tried 
to " teach-by-tease " ; Tiny is by no means the 
first newly-made husband who has slammed the 
door and " gone j oggle- j oggle down the path," 
and furthermore has added insult to injury by pre- 
tending " don't-care-damb." The specimen quar- 
rel which follows in Redcoat Captain deserves to 
be quoted in ecctenso: 

Then Baby peeped; and her handkerchief was at 
her mouth; and she said in a wee voice, 

"Back for tea. Tiny?" 

So Tiny answered, 

** Dunno/' and joggled down the path. 

Then Baby gasped, 

" Hope you will, Tiny-boy ! " And she shut the 
door and ran, because she was taken blubby bad. 

And when Tiny heard that, he could not bear it 
any more, for you can't if they keep on at it; and he 
thought, 

" You are a darling ! I am a cad." 

And he stopped, and turned, and went back to 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 289 

the door as though he had his seven league boots on^ 
to say sorry I'm a cad, which he truly was. 

But the door was shut. 

Then Tiny ran up and down on his feet, and cried 
at the key-hole, 

** Lemme in ! lemme in ! lemme in ! O Baby ! I do 
love you ! Truly sorry ! lemme in ! " 

But it was too late then. 

So Tiny stood outside the door and wished he 
hadn't. And that is what Adam spent his time doing 
outside the Gates of Eden. And it is what most of 
us spend a lot of time doing when it's too late. And 
it very often isn't till you stand outside and wish 
you hadn't, that you know how jolly it was inside, 
before you had. 

There jou have a characteristic quotation, — it 
might have been any one of a score of others 
equally incisive, equally human. For, after all, 
the quality through which Redcoat Captain is 
destined to live is not that of satire, but rather the 
whimsical lightness of phrase that veils a deep, 
underlying seriousness, and makes the mythical 
kingdom of " That Country " a goal within the 
reach of all of us, if only we can remember to 
live with the wise straightforwardness and sim- 
plicity of little children. 

To a casual glance, it would seem as though no 
book could be found presenting a greater contrast 
than Mr. Ollivant's new volume, The Gentleman. 



290 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

Yet, if you study the style, you see very quickly 
the same tendency toward a sort of literary short- 
hand, an almost algebraic brevity of word and 
phrase, which in the hands of this one man is at 
times startlingly effective, and which at the same 
time defies imitation, and would become exas- 
perating if clumsily plagiarized. This one point 
of similarity in style is worth dwelling upon, be- 
cause there is always a certain interest in tracing 
the kinship between an author's works ; and in 
this particular case, the kinship lies in style alone, 
— otherwise, The Gentleman stands by itself, a dis- 
tinctly bigger achievement than either of its 
author's earlier books ; and, one is tempted to add, 
the book best entitled of any story written in Eng- 
lish since the days of Robert Louis Stevenson to 
trace its ancestry straight back to the purest 
strain of the romantic novel. 

Had he chosen, Mr. Ollivant might have in- 
scribed as sub-title to The Gentleman " A Novel 
Without a Heroine." The shadow of a woman's 
influence in moulding the destinies of England lies 
heavily across its canvas, but only men enter into 
the action of it. It is difficult to recall for the 
moment any recent volume of importance since 
Joseph Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus from 
which the feminine element is so completely elim- 
inated. A two-page preface, in its opening lines, 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 291 

gives the date, July, 1805, as well as the historical 
background to the story. 

" Succeed, and you command the Irish expedition/' 
said the squat fellow. 

" My Emperor ! " replied the tall cavalryman, 
saluted, and clanked away in the gloom. 

Regarding the element of true history In this 
book, it is very doubtful whether any one qualified 
to appreciate the finest qualities of it will care to 
raise a question. At least some such thought must 
have been in Mr. Ollivant's mind when for his clos- 
ing word he penned, with characteristic brevity, " I 
will answer no questions about this book." His 
instinct must have told him that only those prosaic 
souls who are blind to the spirit of true romance 
would want to measure him by the dry-as-dust 
standards of recorded history. It is the hall-mark 
of the best historical romance, whether it be Ivan- 
hoe or Les Trois M ous que t aires, Richard Yea-and- 
Nay or The Gentleman, that one cares not in the 
least whether the historic personages within their 
pages ever had a separate existence in the real 
world. They exist for this once at least, more 
vivid, more genuine, more convincingly human 
than any historic record could ever make them. 
And whatever statistical history may have to say 
of Richard I., of Richelieu, of "the man of 



292 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

Aboukir Bay," — there are those of us who will still 
treasure the pictures drawn by the masters of 
romance, among whom Mr. Ollivant seems destined 
to find an abiding place. 

Of the details of plot in The Gentleman it is 
not necessary to know more than this: that it 
concerns an attempt to entrap and capture no less 
a personage than Nelson himself, through the 
agency of the woman whom Nelson loves ; the dis- 
covery of that attempt through a message, hidden 
in a woman's scent-bottle that is found in a dead 
man's mouth; and the frustration of the whole 
scheme at the cost of many valiant lives. What 
you bring away from the book is not so much a 
detailed impression of a carefully worked-out plan 
of campaign by the " Squat Fellow " across the 
channel, as it is a series of tense, grim, masterful 
pictures of heroes, indomitably fighting and dying 
gloriously for a great cause. As an example of 
literary shorthand, — for there is really no other 
phrase that serves to define his peculiar power of 
verbal condensation, his remarkable trick of nar- 
rative foreshortening, — The Gentleman is quite 
inimitable. The scenes shift before your eyes with 
the rapidity of a moving picture ; you catch light- 
ning flashes of battle scenes glimpsed through a 
murk of smoke and fire ; a dozen words, the stroke 
of a pen and the impression has been given. An- 
other penstroke, and you perceive succinct and un- 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 293 

forgettable the picture of nature's peace, follow- 
ing upon the discord of man : " All was silence 
and a few pale stars." 

But the only adequate way in which to give an 
impression of the true flavor of the book is by 
letting it speak for itself in a few rather extended 
quotations. No one who has described warfare on 
land or sea, from Smollett, Marryat and Hugo to 
Tolstoy and Zola, has been free from scenes of hor- 
ror. Alfred Ollivant is no exception to the rule; 
there are many pages in The Gentleman that set 
you shuddering. But study the sheer, grim power 
of a passage like the following, which describes a 
boy's first impression of what is happening below 
decks, among the guns of a battleship in action : 

The boy dropped into Hell. 

Down there was no order. All was howling chaos. 
Each gun-captain fought his own gun^ regardless of 
the rest. Billows of smoke drifted to and fro; shad- 
owy forms flitted; guns bounded and bellowed; here 
and there a red glare lit the fog. 

Through the shattering roar of the guns, the rend- 
ing of planks^ the scream of round-shot, came the 
voices of men, dim-seen. Jokes, blasphemies, pray- 
ers, groans, issued in nightmare medley from that 
death-fog. . . . 

On mid-deck a shadow was pirouetting madly. 
Suddenly, it collapsed; and the boy saw it ended at 
the neck. 



294s ALFRED OLLIVANT 

A dim figure lolled against an overturned gun. As 
the lad gazed^, it pointed to a puddle beside it. 

" That's me/' it said with slow and solemn in- 
terest. 

The boy trod on something in the smoke. A 
bloody wraith, spread-eagled upon the deck, raised 
tired eyes to his. 

" That's all right, sir/* came a whisper. *' Don't 
make no odds. I got all 1 want." . . . 

A shot, screeching past the boy's nose, took his 
breath away. He staggered back, and brought up 
against a gun-captain, his shoulders to the breech of 
the gun. 

The man turned with a grin. It was the Gunner, 
naked to the waist, and smoke-grimed. 

** Sweet mess, ain't it ? " he coughed. " How d'ye 
like your first smell o' powder, sir} " 

And as a companion picture to this, here is a 
glimpse of the boy's condition of mind when he 
first catches the contagion of conflict from his 
battle-fellows : 

Uplifted as a lover, the wine of War drowned his 
senses. In the glory of doing, he had no thought 
for the thing done. His was the midsummer mad- 
ness of slaying. In that singing moment how should 
he remember the bleak and shuddering autumn of 
pain, inevitably to follow.^ — the winter of clammy 
death .^ — the March- wind voices of distant women, 
wailing their mates .^ 



ALFRED OLLIVANT 295 

And in contrast with these scenes of carnage, 
here is one more episode printed as a complete sub- 
chapter, which will serve the double purpose of 
illustrating the author's power of pathetic tender- 
ness, as well as his ability to say a wondrous deal 
in the fewest and simplest words : 

The Parson bent. 

" Piper! " he called low. " Piper! " 

The old man stirred. 

" D'you know who I am? " 

One great forefinger uplifted and fell. 

" We won through/' choked the Parson^ " Nelson's 
safe." 

The old man's lips parted. 

" Mr. Caryll's brought a message for you from Nel- 
son," continued the Parson. " Kit ! " 

The boy bent his lips to the ear of the dying sailor. 

*' Piper! " he cried, his pure boy's voice ringing 
out fearlessly. "' Nelson — sent — his — love — to — you 
— his — love." 

" He can't hear/' choked the Parson, *' it's no 
good." 

" Hush/* said the boy. 

He knew the message would take minutes traveling 
along the dying passages to the brain. 

At last, at last it reached. 

The old man's face broke into a smile, fair as a 
winter sunset. 

" Love" he whispered, nodded deliberately, and 
died. 



296 ALFRED OLLIVANT 

But in attempting to find adequate quotations, 
one runs up against the very unusual difficulty of 
choice, because almost every paragraph strikes 
one on a second reading as almost equally good. 
Indeed, the more one studies The Gentleman, the 
more the conviction grows that it is one of the very 
few novels of the first magnitude that the past 
decade has produced. 

In conclusion, a few words seem to be demanded 
regarding Mr. Ollivant's place in contemporary 
fiction. It is obvious that he stands outside the 
current movement, that he has not seriously in- 
fluenced its trend nor been influenced by it. All 
that he does bears the unmistakable stamp of origi- 
nality, — not that commoner, more obvious original- 
ity that lies in a clever plot, a new type of char- 
acter, but that far rarer sort which suggests a 
personality behind the book bigger and finer than 
the book itself. It is this pervading sense, as one 
reads the pages of Mr. Ollivant, of enjoying an 
hour's intercourse with a man who has thought 
deeply on many subjects and has reached an ab- 
solute independence of view through his own line 
of reasoning, that gives his books a breadth and 
depth out of all proportion to their immediate 
scope and interest. They are not local or 
ephemeral in their appeal; they have a touch of 
universality that is the hall-mark of books likely 
to endure. 




MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

The difficulty that presents itself at the out- 
set of a critical study of Mrs. Henry Dudeney's 
novels is the simple fact that the majority of them 
are not of sufficient importance to merit such 
analysis. The Mrs. Dudeney of recent years, the 
author of Robin Brilliant and Rachel Lorian, of 
The Orchard Thief and The Shoulder-Knot ^ might 
properly be dismissed with a brief paragraph giv- 
ing her credit for a pleasant style, a pervading 
readableness, and a keen eye for the importance of 
seeming trivialities. But it happens that Mrs. 
Dudeney has had two periods ; and in the earlier 
of the two she produced at least three volumes of 
very unusual quality, volumes which it is difficult 
for any one, on whom they have once cast their 
spell, to appraise in terms of sober moderation. 
These volumes are F0II2/ Corner, Men of Marlowe's 
and Spindle and Plough, — -and it is to these three 
books that the present study will be mainly limited. 

It is well to bear in mind that whatever is here 
said by way of generalization regarding Mrs. 
Dudeney's literary creed and methods of work re- 
fers to her earlier period, the period when her 
297 



298 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

powers of observation were wonderfully alert and 
her intuitions of character and temperament aston- 
ishingly keen. As a novelist she has two claims to 
consideration. One is her marvelous skill in the 
presentment of petty details ; the other is her in- 
sight into the complexities of some of the more 
uncommon types of feminine nature. In her com- 
prehensive view of life nothing seems to be too 
obvious or too trivial for mention. She delights 
in emphasizing the sharp contrast offered every- 
where and at all times around us between the things 
of the spirit and the things of the flesh, — the gro- 
tesque incongruity between the stress and storm 
of inner emotions and the untroubled tenor of the 
outside physical world. Throughout the crises in 
her stories she insists upon keeping clearly be- 
fore us the petty happenings of everyday life, — 
the distant ring of the blacksmith's hammer, the 
trivial, empty gossip of good-natured but hope- 
lessly limited village folk, a stranger's chance ut- 
terance overheard in a crowd and freighted with 
unguessed significance, the meaningless words 
which wink out, letter by letter, in lines of fire as 
glimpsed from a London 'bus, and serve to sym- 
bolize " the weird, the threatening, the unknown." 
Regarding Mrs. Dudeney's second claim to at- 
tention, it is somewhat difficult to say precisely 
what one has in mind because of the danger of con- 
veying some subtle half-tone of meaning which may 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY S99 

not be quite the meaning the writer sought to con- 
vey. In view of the stigma which seems to attach 
to the term " sex-problem novel," one hesitates to 
apply it to such eminently sane, clear-sighted pic- 
tures of life as Folly Corner and Spindle and 
Plough. Yet the vital and dominant note in both 
these books, the note which differentiates them 
sharply from the work of many another careful 
and able writer, is their delicate yet pervading 
consciousness of sex. Mrs. Dudeney's literary 
creed may best be defined as a wholesome realism, 
the sort of realism which does not go out of its way 
to search for the unpleasant side of life, but does 
not ignore or shrink from what it finds in the 
natural and ordinary course. With the morbid 
curiosity of certain psychological writers of the 
Continental school for what is abnormal and per- 
verted, she has nothing in common. She sim- 
ply recognizes quite frankly the existence of 
certain basic, elemental facts, and handles them 
with a fearlessness characteristic of those who live 
their lives close to nature, who have grown up in 
the atmosphere of field and farm and delight in the 
study of nature's methods of growth and of 
fruition. 

In treating the sex element, it is quite unneces- 
sary for a novelist to go to the length of a Zola 
or a d'Annunzio in order to make us recognize 
that it is an ever-present factor in the social life 



300 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

of all times and countries ; and that no amount of 
conventional ignoring or glossing over will alter 
the fact that it is often a paramount influence in 
the history of many a normal man or woman ; that 
below an apparently tranquil surface, an unspoken 
and inexplicable partiality or aversion contains the 
key to many a life which otherwise would have been 
lived differently. The great distinction of Mrs. 
Dudeney's book is her marvelous subtlety in un- 
derstanding and expounding just such cases of 
personal attraction and repulsion. Her characters 
stand forth from the printed page endowed with 
the breath of life, not because they are better in- 
dividualized, clearer portraitures, with all their 
little idiosyncrasies of manner and of taste, but 
because of their frank consciousness of sex, be- 
cause she has made them normal, healthy men and 
women, tingling with vitality, and the joy of liv- 
ing. Her men, at least the men for whom she be- 
trays a personal predilection, are for the most 
part stalwart, hard-working farmers, of the more 
prosperous sort, with an atmosphere of the glebe 
about them; her women are large and built on 
strong lines, and, if not actually beautiful, are 
at least good to look upon, and with a suggestion 
of physical well-being about them. They are none 
of them of the neurotic, anemic type of Con- 
tinental fiction. There is not a Magda nor a 
Hedda Gabler nor a Madame de Burne among 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 301 

them. They are as far from being spoiled by 
modern higher education as they are from sink- 
ing to the level of mere household drudgery. In 
short, they are simply types of the average middle- 
class Englishwoman, with all her qualities and her 
limitations. 

It is in her searching studies of women that Mrs. 
Dudeney has revealed powers that approach 
closely to the border-line of genius. Her chief pre- 
occupation seems to be the conflict which goes on 
in the heart of a certain type of woman between 
two opposing instincts, — that of independence and 
freedom and physical comfort on the one hand, 
and on the other that of sex and sacrifice and self- 
surrender. For the most part the type which 
seems to have interested Mrs. Dudeney, to the ex- 
clusion of all others, is that in which the second 
of these impulses is paramount. Harriott Wicken 
is a case in point. From the moment that she first 
met Daniel Darnell, casually met him in a 'bus and 
scraped an acquaintance as a housemaid might 
have done, he was the one dominant influence in her 
life. Here is the way that Mrs. Dudeney gives us 
a glimpse into the girl's heart in the midst of the 
honeymoon, multiplying and piling up her luminous 
little details until we could not help seeing, even 
against our will: 

Her eyes, through the zigzag veil, were fixed hun- 
grily on her husband. She was so happy. There 



302 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

would no longer be any wrong settings to life. Peo- 
ple would be harmonious. She was already begin- 
ning to find out that this was only another word for 
well-bred. Dandie was the keystone of her life. 
She was unconscious of the thick streak of prig in 
him. He was so handsome^ so well-dressed, so ele- 
gant. She loved his drawling, haughty voice. She 
loved to see him take out his lizard-skin cigar case 
bound in silver, or his equally dainty and effeminate 
pocket-book. She used to finger the bottles and cas- 
kets in his dressing-bag; she had never come into 
actual contact with such daintiness before. His trim, 
golden mustache, well-kept nails, and expression of 
gentle boredom fascinated and rather awed her. 
Sometimes she fancied herself quite uncouth and loud 
by contrast. He was faintly stupid too. She found 
that restful. She was so full of moods that his even 
temper and indolent, everyday way of taking life 
refreshed her. Once she had longed to be clever, to 
distinguish herself in some way, but now she had 
learned wisdom; clever people were a great nuisance 
to every one, and most of all to themselves. 

The central interest, however, in The Maternity 
of Harriott Wicken, is less the relations between 
a particular man and woman than it is a grim 
problem in heredity, the shadow of retribution 
which nature exacts from those who break her 
laws. For generations there has been a taint in 
the family of Wicken. Intemperance, epilepsy, 
insanity and crime are some of the forms in which 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 303 

the taint manifests itself. When Harriott Wicken 
herself is ushered into the world it is under cir- 
cumstances as hideous a^ any author has ever 
ventured to imagine. The mother, knowing her 
hour has almost come, has tried to distract her 
troubled thoughts by re«,ding the columns of a 
local paper in which are printed the ghastly de- 
tails of a brutal murder, a young girl of the neigh- 
borhood found in a swamp where her assailant had 
hidden the body after cutting her throat. The ex- 
perienced old woman who is in attendance upon 
Mrs. Wicken and has helped to bring more than 
one child of that name into the world, tries to 
draw her thoughts away from these morbid hor- 
rors, but at this critical moment the husband's 
heavy, shuffling tread is heard and he lurches into 
the room and stumbles in a drunken stupor into a 
chair. It is better to leave Mrs. Dudeney to tell 
what follows in her own words: 

The newspaper which his wife had let slip to the 
floor attracted his attention. He pounced on it with 
an uncanny air of glee, turned to the report of the 
tragedy, stared at it with a wide, vacant smile for a 
moment, and then, throwing it down, thrust his face 
forward and gave a laugh. . . . They saw him draw 
his forefinger across his throat in a curved clean 
sweep, and then he laughed again. 

"Charming girl! Neat job! The fools! They 
little think that I — how she tore and struggled — like 



304 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

a tiger! Heavy to drag into cover. My knife — 
Rosalie ! " 

And at the end of the chapter Mrs. Dudeney 
laconically sums up the net results of the tragedy 
with the brief statement that " upstairs, Mrs. Gat- 
ley was giving a new Wicken, in spite of itself, its 
first toilette," and that Rosalie " was growing cold 
in her bed, her sharp-pointed nose severely out- 
lined, and her eyes — the horror had never gone out 
of them — closed on an unsatisfactory world." 
Harriott is adopted by her mother's sister and 
grows up in ignorance of the fact that her father 
committed suicide on the same night that he was 
responsible for her mother's death. It is made 
very clear that, with the curse of the house of 
Wicken hanging over her, Harriott has no moral 
right to marry; but, unfortunately for her, the 
poor girl is not warned in time. Her child, when 
born, is outwardly like other children, and as the 
months go by she is far too engrossed in Dandie, 
and also too jealous of his pride in the child to be 
as observant of it as a mother should. It is only 
when the child is over a year old and is still hair- 
less and toothless, unable to creep or to lisp a 
syllable and gazes on the world with eyes of dull 
vacancy, that a chance bit of servants' gossip en- 
lightens her and reveals the horror she must face. 
Dandie has meanwhile been called to South 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 305 

America on business, and is gone altogether 
eighteen months. Week after week, during his ab- 
sence, he receives long letters relating in detail 
the clever sayings and doings of his child; every 
chance phrase overheard by Harriott from the 
children in the London streets contributes to the 
weekly bulletin. And when he returns at last, 
somewhat unexpectedly, he is a little puzzled to 
find that his wife has given up their former home, 
removed to new quarters and dismissed all the old 
staff of servants. But he quickly forgets his as- 
tonishment in delight at the bright, sunny-faced, 
beautiful little child that calls him " papa " and 
dances gaily around him. And all the time Har- 
riott is haunted by the last glimpse she had of the 
pitiful little monstrosity which was none the less 
her own flesh and blood, and which she had left to 
the untender ministration of an old hag in a dis- 
tant country town. Of course, a piece of decep- 
tion of this sort sooner or later works its own 
retribution. From the hour when she gave up her 
child Harriott's torture of defrauded motherhood 
begins. She hates the innocent usurper with an 
augmenting hatred, a hatred that she cannot dis- 
guise; and she sees that because of it, her hus- 
band's love is slipping from her. And then a few 
crucial events happen in swift succession. The 
young physician who was an early suitor in the 
days before she met Dandie and who helped her in 



306 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

the substitution of the child, sends her a pre- 
arranged signal; she must come at once if she 
wishes to see it alive. Throughout the night she 
and the doctor are together in a lonely cottage 
waging a winning battle against pneumonia, and 
by morning the useless little life is saved. But 
gossip travels quickly, and Dandie learns that his 
wife and the doctor have met clandestinely. It 
would have been interesting to learn what, in Mrs. 
Dudeney's opinion, would have been the attitude 
of a man like Dandie if he had learned of the de- 
ception practised on him by his wife. But this he 
was destined not to do. It was easier for Harriott 
to let him believe the worst about her, to pass out 
of his life, to bury herself and her idiot child in the 
isolation of the old country house which had wit- 
nessed her own birth and shared so many grim 
family secrets ; and later, when the cold, gray 
horror of her exile became unbearable, to end it 
all by aiding nature to shorten the child's life 
and promptly follow it herself into the final mys- 
tery. 

Folly Corner^ although it has its grim episodes, 
is by contrast a blithe and cheerful book. Further- 
more, it is easily Mrs. Dudeney's masterpiece. The 
character of Pamela Crisp, which constitutes the 
vital interest of the book, is one of which, it may 
be said, with some confidence, that not one woman 
in ten will recognize the absolute truth, for she 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 307 

stands outside the circle of their experience. The 
casual man is far more likely to recognize the type, 
while a small masculine minority will inevitably 
find her fascinating. And yet Pamela is not a 
girl who may justly be called abnormal. On the 
surface, she even impresses one as a trifle common- 
place. She is a big girl, we are told casually, of 
twenty-five or less, with gray eyes and fair hair, 
" a handsome girl in the elementary way which 
satisfies most men " ; she is, moreover, of mercurial 
temperament, and quick to register slight fluctua- 
tions in the emotional barometer, a girl who " can 
be made happy by a bar of French chocolate and 
miserable by a shabby bonnet." She is a curious 
blending of snob and Cockney, with just such a 
smattering of culture as to take herself and her 
opinions very seriously; above all, a thoroughly 
feminine, yet thoroughly cat-like young person, 
with all a cat's love of a sleek coat and a cozy cor- 
ner by the fire — and, like a cat, quite guiltless of 
any sense of gratitude. Such is the obvious, every- 
day Pamela, the Pamela who was known to the 
placid, commonplace ladies of Liddleshorn. But, 
unfortunately for Pamela's peace of mind, there 
was another side to her nature, an emotional side, 
which had long lain dormant, and which, when 
awakened, was a revelation to herself. There were 
in her nature certain imperious claims of sex, — - 
certain chords of passion ready to respond to the 



308 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

right man ; and the right man had touched them. 
It makes no difference in the story that Pamela's 
romance had been an utterly commonplace affair — ■ 
a mere boarding-house courtship, interrupted by 
the vulgar accident of her lover's arrest and im- 
prisonment for swindling; the real point of inter- 
est lies in the influence exerted over her by this 
one man — an influence so great that the mere 
pressure of his hand, the sound of his voice when 
he called her " Pam," the sight of his name in the 
daily papers, any material evidence, in short, of 
his existence, was sufficient to destroy her will 
power and render her his abject slave. At the 
opening of the story, however, the prison doors, 
shutting him from her sight, have partly broken 
the spell, and her normal love of ease and com- 
fort begins to reassert itself. But the slanting 
shadow of those prison walls stretches coldly 
across every page of the book. 

Folly Corner has been the abode of the Jaynes 
ever since the time of the Commonwealth, and every 
male Jayne has been a Jethro. Mrs. Dudeney 
evidently believes that destinies are largely de- 
cided by the trivialities of life. It was just because 
the present Jethro Jayne had taken an extra glass 
of cider on market day, perhaps also because he 
let his thoughts linger too long upon the demure 
little ringlets on the waitress's pretty forehead, 
that he was prompted to indulge in the joke of 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 309 

advertising for a wife in the Liddleshorn Herald. 
It was equally by chance that a stray copy of this 
paper found its way to London and fell beneath 
the eye of Pamela ; and because she remembered in 
a vague way having seen the sheet before, in child- 
hood, her glance strayed down the column of ad- 
vertisements. Coinciding as it did with her long- 
ing to escape from the haunting shadow of the 
prison, the temptation was too strong, and 
Pamela answered. The effect of the cider had 
meanwhile worn off, and Jethro would probably 
have carried his matrimonial joke no further; but 
the name Pamela Crisp appealed to him; his 
mother had been a Crisp; Pamela's father, he 
learned later, had been called John, the name of 
his uncle who had run away to sea when a boy. 
He and Pamela might be cousins ; indeed, they 
must be ; and in that way he settled it. It is as 
Jethro's cousin that Pamela is introduced to all 
the relatives, at Liddleshorn, and to Jethro's grim 
old housekeeper, Gainah Toat, who for a score of 
years has locked in her heart the secret knowledge 
that had Jethro's father lived but a few weeks 
longer she would have been mistress and not serv- 
ant at Folly Corner, and who now sees herself 
about to be supplanted and shoved aside. The 
vigor with which Mrs. Dudeney has drawn this 
character of Gainah is masterly and second only 
to that of Pamela in interest. 



310 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

She had a white face; there was a general appear- 
ance of wasting about her. Her body was flat and 
square; her faded gown made no pretense of show- 
ing the defect; it went straight from her stringy- 
throat to her hardly perceptible lips without a break, 
without a kindly fold or tuck of the stuff. 

Gainah is a woman whose life " had been one 
long flurry of immaculate housekeeping " ; whose 
naturally fierce passions had found their only out- 
let in feverish activity, and now that she finds her- 
self superseded, the transformation which goes on 
in her dull mind is admirably developed, although 
quite subservient to the central theme of the story. 

So Pamela comes to be installed at Folly Cor- 
ner ; and fits into the niche offered her, with all the 
complacency of a homeless cat. The weeks slip 
by, Jethro's matter-of-fact courtship progresses, 
the wedding day is set, — apparently nothing 
stands in the way of their happiness. Suddenly 
her lover, Edred, reappears, having been let out 
before his time on a ticket-of-leave. At the sound 
of his voice Pamela becomes like wax ; he is intro- 
duced to Jethro as her brother, and in the end 
manages to extort from the latter enough money 
to take him to London and start him on a new 
series of swindling schemes. 

From this point begins the real interest of the 
story, — Pamela's intense and prolonged struggle 
between her miserable passion for Edred and the 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 311 

life of respectable tranquillity which she sacri- 
fices for him. The end is inevitable, — she follows 
him to London, and after some demurring on his 
part they are married. Yet it is all in vain that 
Mrs. Dudeney assures us that Pamela was 
" fiercely respectable " ; we know well enough that 
even if Edred had insisted upon dispensing with 
the ceremony, Pamela would nevertheless have re- 
mained with him ; all that he needed to do was call 
her " Pam," or " good little girl," in his half- 
sneering, half-caressing voice. Under any and all 
conditions she would have taken her chances of 
"periodic joy and black misery " with Edred. 

About those marvelous chapters regarding Pam- 
ela's life with Edred, after she learns that there 
is another woman in his life, and before she learns 
that this other woman has a prior claim upon him, 
it is not necessary to say much here; they should 
be read rather than discussed. But here, as else- 
where, the point of interest is Pamela's struggle 
against her own passion, and she is ready to wel- 
come any avenue of release. For a while she thinks 
that proof of Edred's infidelity would cure her, 
and she throws herself into the task of proving it 
with feverish anxiety, but when she is at last con- 
vinced he is untrue her condition is more hopeless 
than ever: 

She despaired of herself, she hadn't any shame, 
any self-respect, any modesty, — any of those cold. 



812 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

praiseworthy qualities which romance has for cen- 
turies built up and labeled female character. 



In the end Edred dies, and the spell is broken. 
Pamela marries Jethro, — slow, patient, prosaic 
Jethro, — and we leave them to the tranquil joys 
of rural life. Whether Pamela will remain con- 
tented with the humdrum round of domesticity is 
a problem which Mrs. Dudeney wisely left un- 
solved. Liddleshorn is a remote village, and it is 
not likely a second Edred will find his way thither 
to touch the chords of passion. And, even if he 
should, Mrs. Dudeney wishes us to understand that 
Pamela is of the type of woman who vibrates in 
response to just one man and, he being dead, no re- 
awakening is possible for her. And to take issue 
with Mrs. Dudeney on this point would lead us 
too far afield from our subject. But it is perhaps 
worth while to suggest that in this one particular 
even so subtle a psychologist as she still has some- 
thing to learn. 

Men of Marlowe*s is a collection of miscellaneous 
short stories, many of them bearing internal evi- 
dence of having been written prior to Folly Cor- 
ner; and, in point of fact, they are isolated, unre- 
lated stories, in spite of the pseudo-continuity 
which their author has sought to give by taking 
for her setting one of the typical London Inns of 
Court, like the famous Temple Inn, whose inmates 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 313 

lead a more or — sometimes — less bachelor life, be- 
hind their heavy oaken doors. 

A man's oak guards faithfully the story of his 
life, [she says in a prefatory passage] generations 
of secrets, of sins, of sorrows, are held by these stout 
doors, — black and inscrutable, two by two on every 
landing. The stories those black doors could tell! 
I wonder they never crack, — with laughter or great, 
splitting sobs. 

There is a good deal of variety in these stories 
of commonplace people, a good deal of love and 
jealousy, a crime or two, and a taint of mysticism 
here and there, as in " Beyond the Gray Gate." 
The opening tale, " The One in Red," is just the 
sort of tale which might be expected from a 
writer who has given us the grim episode of Gainah 
Toat in Folly Corner. Orion was a mean, weak- 
minded, thoroughly uninteresting sort of person, 
possessed of neither debts, compromising visitors, 
nor delicate difficulties ; " a mean, drab life," com- 
ments Mrs. Dudeney. But he finally puts plenty 
of color into it, by murdering his aunt, the " one 
in red," because he was tired of waiting for her 
fortune, — quite a fruitless crime, as it turns out, 
because, aside from the confession which conscience 
and too much whisky lead him to make, — he never 
would have inherited the money in any case, since 
she had willed it to some one else. 



314 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

But the really significant stories in this collec- 
tion are the ones in which Mrs. Dudeney studies 
her own sex, — stories like " Why? " or " An Inter- 
lude," or even " Arnold's Laundress." Unpleasant 
they undoubtedly are, even repellent, some readers 
may think them ; for the author has painted her 
sex in very unflattering colors, and quite un- 
shrinkingly strips off" the veil of conventionalities ; 
and all the while we feel their obvious, undeniable 
truth. Different as they are, her types of women, 
dark and fair, good and bad, all have this in com- 
mon; they are all introspective, emotional women, 
mere bundles of nerves, moods and mutability. 
For instance, there is Adeline Pray in " Why ? " 
who had married Pray because her first lover could 
not marry her, and who wore herself out in a few 
years with remorse and a broken heart, and on 
her death-bed dictated what her husband thought 
was her death notice, when it was really meant as a 
sort of farewell message to her lover. " The dead 
face tantalized him. The eternal, remorseful ten- 
derness was strong on her lips of steel. There had 
always been a sprig of rue in her love. Why? 
that maddening why, never to be answered," — 
never, at any rate, by the husband, though there 
was one room in Marlowe's whose paneled 
walls might have told him, if they could have 
spoken. 

After all, however, " An Interlude " is the story 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 315 

which will best bear a second reading, not only for 
its own sake, but because it contains, so to speak, 
the seed thought of Folly Corner^ — the idea of a 
young woman who, while knowing all the value of 
home, tranquillity and the love of an honorable 
man, is compelled to jeopardize it all for the sake 
of another man whom she cannot respect, but who 
possesses that peculiar compelling influence which 
certain men have over this kind of woman. It 
may be that the resemblance between the novel and 
the short story will not strike the average reader ; 
the plot, as a whole, is quite different, and the out- 
ward contrast is sharp between Pamela Crisp and 
dainty, " dressy " little Mrs. Conifer. But the 
more you study the central theme, the more the 
resemblance impresses you. The story of " An In- 
terlude " is worth while outlining briefly. Conifer 
was a stockbroker, whose absorption in his busi- 
ness left him little time to spare for his wife, and 
she, finding the hours hanging on her hands, fell 
into the pernicious habit of paying surreptitious 
visits to Kinsman's artistic chambers in Marlowe's, 
and partaking of the dainty tea which he had 
ready in her honor. But one evening, by one of 
those accidents which will happen sooner or latter, 
she encounters at Kinsman's door Sophia Dominy, 
the big, flashy brunette from the neighboring man- 
tle shop, who makes clear her own prior claim to 
Kinsman and sets forth their relative positions in 



316 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

such very blunt phrases as to bring up before Mrs. 
Conifer terrifying visions of the divorce court and 
make an episode which hitherto had been only 
" delicious, piquant, dangerous, — like a leaf torn 
out of the Decameron," seem both vulgar and 
wicked. " Mrs. Conifer was a faithful wife again, 
in every thought, directly she looked into those 
blazing black eyes and understood." For the next 
four years, Mrs. Conifer is a model of discre- 
tion in every thought and deed, but at last 
nemesis overtakes her, in the shape of Kinsman, 
whom the world has meanwhile treated rather 
roughly, and who, having retained possession of 
her letters, proceeds systematically to black- 
mail her. Finally, having bled the woman quite 
dry, he calls to show the letters to her hus- 
band, but is followed and shot on the steps by 
Sophia Dominy, who has cherished an unreasoning 
jealousy towards Mrs. Conifer, and who kills her- 
self immediately afterwards. It is some time be- 
fore Mrs. Conifer can grasp the significance of this 
event, or realize that she is at last safe, — safe, ex- 
cept for the package of letters in the breast pocket 
of the dead man lying stretched out on the table 
downstairs ; and the manner in which she nerves 
herself to creep downstairs, slippers in hand, peel 
the sheet from Kinsman's face, thrust her hand 
" heavy with Conifer's jewels," into the dead man's 
coat and steal her letters, is a bit of description 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 317 

surpassed only by that of her reaction when she 
once more gains her own room : 

She crept in^ looking furtively round the firelit 
walls. She went over to the hearth^ dug the unclean 
letters fiercely in, and watched them burn. There 
was a little white frock airing on the guard. She 
took it up in her hot hands and kissed it. Toys 
were all over the floor; one, a fur monkey with one 
eye missing and the other fiery-red, seemed to blink 
up malignantly — and as if it knew and would one 
day tell her children. . . . Heavy with shame, think- 
ing of those two — things — below, she slipped to the 
floor and tried to pray — for the souls of the dead 
and the peace of the living. But her knees stiffened. 
She stumbled to her feet, moaning. A grotesque 
memory beat in on her. She remembered the old 
superstition — that no witch could shed a tear; that 
this was the witches' most bitter punishment. Well, 
here was hers. She could not pray. She had sinned, 
but she had come through the fire. She was faithful 
to Conifer with a double fervor. She had a high 
constancy and love which the mere faithful wife, who 
has never been tempted, cannot attain. Still — she 
must bear the burden — of an interlude — all her days. 

This type of woman, which Mrs. Dudeney has 
drawn repeatedly with a master touch, — the type 
of the weak, yielding woman who furtively steals 
back to the scene of former rendezvous simply be- 
cause the old, compelling power of a burnt-out 



318 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

passion is still too strong to be combated, — raises 
in the mind an insistent question ; namely, whether 
Mrs. Dudeney herself intended it to represent the 
average normal woman, — whether, in short, she 
believes that for every woman there exists some- 
where in the world a man whose voice possesses that 
mysterious, compelling power that will make her 
almost hypnotically do his will. Spindle and 
Plough is an interesting answer to this question 
and it is emphatically in the negative. In this 
story Mrs. Dudeney has portrayed the opposite 
type, the woman largely lacking in what the 
French conveniently term temperament; the 
woman with a deep-rooted contempt for love and 
marriage and the male sex in general — a contempt 
usually based upon ignorance and immaturity. 

Shalisha Pilgrim is a big, broad-shouldered, 
somewhat masculine girl with an innate spirit of 
freedom and independence, — a girl to whom fresh 
air and outdoor life are essential and who would 
stifle in the artificial atmosphere of a London 
drawing-room. As a child, her ugliness was her 
mother's despair; as a woman, she has just fallen 
short of beauty, in spite of her dark, arching 
brows and her heavy rope of red-gold hair ; but she 
has that rarer charm of expression, which is better 
and more lasting than any physical loveliness. In- 
tolerant of love and sentiment, Shalisha is by 
nature qualified for deep devotion. The maternal 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 319 

instinct, the spirit of self-sacrifice, is highly de- 
veloped, and she is impelled to lavish it upon some- 
thing or somebody. So long as her father, an im- 
poverished and invalid artist, was alive, she 
lavished it on him. After his death she trans- 
fers it to her mother, a silly, flighty, Dresden- 
china little woman, whose mature years in no way 
interfere with endless flirtations, and whom 
Shalisha guards jealously from a second mar- 
riage, looking with youthful austerity upon the 
bare possibility as a profanation of her father's 
memory. Shalisha, driven by her spirit of inde- 
pendence, has undergone the full training course 
for landscape gardening, and at the opening of 
the story she has just obtained an excellent situa- 
tion in the country, through the good offices of her 
" Godmother Bloss," — a piece of good fortune 
which she welcomes chiefly as an opportunity to 
break off* her mother's latest matrimonial entangle- 
ment with portly, pompous Mr. Poundsberry, a 
well-to-do auctioneer, who confuses his aspirates 
and drinks his tea from the saucer. 

At Bramble Bye, Mr. Boylett's estate, Shalisha 
comes in close personal contact, for the first time 
in her life, with men, — two men in particular, her 
employer and Felix Rule, the sheriff^. Both of 
these men, attracted by the novel charm of the 
girl's freedom, her masculine independence, her 
unconventionality, soon seek to win her, each in 



320 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

his own way ; and their attentions vaguely trouble 
her, although the trouble is not wholly unpleasant 
to her. Yet so little does she know of matters of 
the heart that Boylett's proposal takes her un- 
awares, and what Felix says to her on the eve of 
his departure for America is said and answered, 
and he is well on his journey before she grasps the 
fact that he has offered himself and she has re- 
fused him. Boylett she refuses with her eyes wide 
open. His offer means much to her; it means a 
life-long home in the place where she has labored 
so lovingly; it means the care of Boylett's or- 
phaned daughter whom Shalisha longs to take 
under her maternal wing. But the price is too 
high, because it means also the sacrifice of her 
freedom, the abandonment of her outdoor life, the 
necessity of fulfilling a wife's obligations to Boy- 
lett, — a man who " is guilty of the effeminacy of a 
Pullman car " and " talks about the beauties of 
nature instead of feeling and living them." Be- 
sides, deep down in her heart, under the austerity 
of her unawakened senses, she already knows that, 
sooner or later, Felix, sensible, plodding English 
farmer though he is, will return and claim her in 
spite of herself. 

In point of fact, Felix does return, — a trans- 
formed Felix, in all the opulence of new raiment, 
heavy watch-chain and blazing pin, and with the 
comfortable assurance of a neat little fortune 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 321 

amassed by honest toil. He makes the mistake of 
taking ShaHsha's consent almost for granted and 
blurts out his plans to take her away from Bram- 
ble Bye, to lavish jewels on her, to transport her 
to the very life which she has always held in con- 
tempt. In his eagerness and impetuosity he gives 
her no time to collect herself: 

He frightened and chilled her. The old disquieting 
thrill which she had felt before under his touch con- 
vulsed her now. She distrusted this joy. It opened 
the flood-gates of emotion. She didn't want to be 
stirred. She wanted to lead her celibate, calm life. 
She wanted nothing tangible. He might love and 
admire and serve and guard — no more. She experi- 
enced an old maid's prudery and cautious retreat. 
She tried to put a greater distance between them. 
His eyes, his hands, ardent; his mouth so near that 
she could feel the hot breath of his hurried breathing 
— alarmed her. She felt herself to be in a vague 
way sullied. 

He retreated farther than she wished. He seemed 
to divine the distaste she felt; perhaps it was written 
on her twitching, averted face. 

" What do you want.^ " he asked, in a voice like a 
whip. 

" I don't know," she returned brokenly. 

" Is it possible that a woman can be such a fool ? " 

This is the way in which Felix came and went a 
second time ; because Shalisha, unlike Pamela, was 



S22 MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 

not one of those women who sacrifice everything 
and come at the first careless word of the man they 
love. She is capable of self-surrender to a high 
degree ; but it must be on her own terms and in her 
own good time. And when Felix at last comes for 
a third time, stripped of his fortune and his finery, 
hungry and in rags, and she takes him in and 
gives him a prodigal's welcome, one feels that the 
great devotion of which she is capable and which 
has at last found a permanent object upon which 
to spend itself has even now far more of the ma- 
ternal in its nature than it has of the compelling 
force of true passion. 

That there are volumes among Mrs. Dudeney's 
later works that are not devoid of interest, it 
would be foolish to deny. There is The Battle of 
the Weak, telling how a young woman keeps her 
promise to marry a staid country doctor, although 
her heart is full of love for another man, a wild, 
reckless sailor ; how the sailor goes to sea, and the 
years pass, and a child is born to her, which, al- 
though its features are those of its father, yet in 
voice and a hundred tricks of manner day by day 
recalls to all who see it the untamed, roving sailor 
who had filled its mother's thoughts. Then there 
is Rachel Lorian, the tragedy of a young woman, 
whose husband, on the first day of their honey- 
moon, is dragged from under the crumpled wreck- 
age of a railway carriage, hopelessly paralyzed, 



MRS. HENRY DUDENEY 323 

yet likely to live out the average allotted span of 
years. And still again, there is The Wise Woods, 
with its half-civilized, half-gipsy heroine, and the 
ineffectual, dilettante hero, with whom she is mis- 
mated, and its pervading scent of growing things, 
and the music of nature. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Dude- 
ney has become a trained story teller of the 
second-class, and can be trusted to maintain a fair 
average quality. But there was once a brief period 
when she was more than a story teller; when cer- 
tain aspects of life gripped her with an almost 
fierce interest ; when certain ideas clamored for ut- 
terance, and in just two or three books found 
utterance, — ^books throbbing with the poignancy 
of life, that deserve to be saved from the forgotten- 
ness towards which they are drifting. They were 
obviously the product of young 3^ears, when phys- 
ical perceptions were keener, when joys and sor- 
rows loomed up bigger, when every budding leaf 
and opening flower were fraught with momentous 
possibilities. It is given to comparatively i^w 
writers, even for a few short years, to sense life so 
deeply and so understandingly. And that is why 
Mrs. Dudeney's name is not out of place in a 
volume on the modern story tellers of England. 



JOHN TREVENA 

This is an unpropitious hour in which to take 
a comprehensive view of the past achievements and 
future promise of the author of Furze the Cruel. 
From his first book he revealed himself as one of 
those favored writers who are sure of themselves, 
of their powers, of their goal, and move steadily 
forward, each new volume adding another mile- 
stone on the road to fame. But suddenly he seems 
to have lost his path, to have taken the wrong 
turning, like a traveler lured to disaster by the 
lying glamour of a mirage. His latest volume, 
Brackeriy suggests nothing so much as the futile 
violence of nightmare-ridden sleep. What it may 
lead to when the sleeper wakes, what new forms of 
symmetry and beauty lurk in the chaos of his 
present mood, it is idle to speculate. But the net 
impression left by the volume's mad mysticism is 
that John Trevena has, like his own creation, Pen- 
doggat, forced his way into so dense and im- 
penetrable a tangle that to return to his former 
road or struggle through to a new one is equally 
impracticable. And this is really a pity, because 
his earlier volumes, few as they are, have won him 




JOHN TREVENA 



JOHN TREVENA 325 

a merited recognition as one of that younger group 
of English novelists who can hardly be omitted 
when mention is made of Galsworthy and Bennett, 
Locke and Snaith and Leonard Merrick, — one, it 
may be added, who has brought a new spirit and a 
new strength into the literature of Dartmoor. 

Concerning the life history and the personality 
of this writer, who chooses to sign himself " John 
Trevena," only a few scant details have passed 
into general knowledge ; but these few constitute 
all that is really essential to an understanding of 
his work. We need only to remember that he is a 
bachelor, somewhat under forty years of age, that 
ill-health has been his lot for the greater part of 
this period, and that he finally learned that the 
smoky, tainted air of English towns acted upon 
him as a slow poison. Dartmoor, with its high 
altitudes, its level, wind-swept stretches, offered a 
chance for recovery; and there, for several years, 
John Trevena has been living in voluntary exile in 
a little isolated cabin, doing all of the manual 
work, unaided, drawing in, day by day, deep 
draughts of health, in his endless wanderings over 
the moors, and finding an inexhaustible source of 
entertainment in studying the curiously warped 
and stunted types of humanity produced by 
nature's struggle for survival. Quite naturally, 
he has come to love each aspect of the land which 
has given him back his health, each varying phase 



3^6 JOHN TREVENA 

of its rugged scenery, each change of tone and 
color from season to season, in sunshine and in 
rain. And it is not surprising that this love of the 
land should be mirrored back in his books, with an 
artist's enthusiasm, an artist's sureness of brush- 
stroke and truth of color. And it was also to be 
foreseen that the people of the moors would go into 
his books just as he sees them, with an uncompro- 
mising literalness of detail that might well give 
offense — and that, as a matter of fact, has once 
at least so far antagonized his neighbors that he 
was forced to change his residence with undignified 
haste, and find lodgment in a new and distant 
locality. 

All this is of genuine interest, not as personal 
gossip, but as the underlying explanation of his 
novels in substance, in spirit and in technique. It 
is only natural that he should challenge compari- 
son with Mr. Eden Phillpotts, since their fields of 
activity so largely intersect. There is in each 
that same artistic sense of landscape beauty, of 
the wonderful softness of nature, seen through a 
shimmering haze of English sunshine, or a slant- 
ing veil of English rain. But when it comes to the 
human life in the stories, one feels at once how 
radically far apart these two authors really are. 
Both of them picture a phase of the English 
peasantry, a people who live their lives in closest 
touch with the soil to which they were born, be- 



JOHN TREVENA 327 

cause they do not know, and never can know, any 
other life. And both Mr. Phillpotts and Mr. Tre- 
vena have studied their people closely and faith- 
fully, without delusion and without malice ; the 
portraiture of each is a fine example of honest and 
unsparing realism. And yet the difference between 
these two authors is fundamental, because it is the 
difference of their point of view. Mr. Phillpotts 
identifies himself with the people of whom he writes. 
He and his characters and his readers are all held 
together in one big, universal bond of understand- 
ing and pity. His very titles symbolize his in- 
dulgent attitude. The people to him are Children 
of the Mist — not abnormal, not wicked, but simply 
immature ; the very land on which they toil out 
their narrow lives is The Good Red Earth. John 
Trevena, on the contrary, remains always an alien. 
The natives are always to him objects of special 
study, but rather in the spirit with which a bot- 
anist studies a new species of lichen than with 
any sense of the brotherhood of man. This is not 
intended to imply that Mr. Trevena's people are 
lacking in individuality. On the contrary, they 
are intensely, often painfully, alive. It is not too 
much to say that one actually suffers more over 
the unconscious cruelty of nature and the inhu- 
manitj^ of man in Mr. Trevena's pages than in any 
of the more sympathetic pictures of life that Mr. 
Phillpotts has given us. But this does not alter 



328 JOHN TREVENA 

the fact that Mr. Trevena's attitude is quite in- 
differently objective; he is not the compassionate 
Samaritan, but the vivisectionist, finding an ab- 
sorbing interest even in suffering and disease and 
death. His whole attitude toward the people of 
the moors is well summed up in a single paragraph 
from the strongest and best of his four books, 
Furze the Cruel: 

There is not a person living who has not done an 
act of cruelty. It is impossible to refrain from it. 
. . . Upon a wild upland passions are fiercer, just 
as physical strength is greater. Tender lilies would 
not live upon the moor, and there is no use looking 
for them. They are down in the valleys. Upon the 
moor, there is the granite, the spiny gorse, the rugged 
heather. It is no use looking for the qualities of the 
lily in those men who are made of the granite, the 
gorse and the heather. 

It is not surprising, in view of this confessed 
attitude, that there is a vein of cruelty running 
through all of Mr. Trevena's books ; characters 
grown inhuman from greed, like Pendoggat in 
Furze the Cruel, inhuman from fanaticism like 
Uncle Gifford in Heather. One recalls a long 
haunting sequence of pitiful figures, derelicts of 
humanity, misshapen and stunted, eking out starv- 
ing lives with the toil of raw and bleeding fingers. 
And yet, the net impression left behind by John 



JOHN TREVENA 329 

Trevena's books is that of high ideals, fine, clean 
living and the wholesome tonic of pure air and 
heaven-sent sunshine. And one naturally asks by 
what means he achieves this paradox. 

The answer is quite simple. Mr. Trevena in 
writing his books is like a gardener who, having 
found a fair and sunny garden, elects to raise in it 
certain rare blossoms, refusing to be troubled by 
the unsightliness of mold and compost, of grubs 
and earthworms in the soil. It may be said, 
without unfairness, that his separate volumes 
practically all conform to a certain simple for- 
mula. There is always a man from the outside 
world, an alien like the author himself; and there 
is always some woman who, if not actually from 
the outside world, is b}^ birth or training not wholly 
of the moor. Sometimes the man is a transient 
visitor like Aubrey Bellamy, in Furze the Cruel, 
who loves and wins Boodles, the beautiful, name- 
less waif of unknown parentage ; or Brian Challa- 
combe, in Arminel of the West, who follows the 
line of least resistance, and thinks lightly of 
woman's honor until he meets Arminel Zaple, 
strong and pure as the moorland wind, and wise 
with some years of outside schooling. Or again, 
the man is living in self-imposed exile, after the 
fashion of Mr. Trevena, himself, like John Bur- 
rough in A Pixy in Petticoats, companionless save 
for Peter, Prince o' Cats, until Beatrice Pentreath 



330 JOHN TREVENA 

comes eluslvely and tantalizingly into his life; or 
George Brunacombe, in Heather, with only Bubo, 
the owl, to share his loneliness, until he brings home 
Winnie Shazell to nurse her back to health and give 
the lie to the physician's pronouncement that she 
is doomed. In all four novels, what one lingers 
over while reading and is glad to evoke afterwards 
in memory is the series of pictures of a man and a 
woman glad because they are young, because they 
are together, because they are drinking in new 
health and new hope, far away from the grime and 
smoke of towns, the physical and moral unclean- 
ness of crowded humanity, and enjoying the splen- 
did freedom of spacious reaches of rugged land 
and open sky. 

It would be unjust to imply that these four vol- 
umes are of uniform merit. On the contrary, John 
Trevena showed in them a steady growth which 
promised well for his future work. With each 
volume, he became a little closer in touch with 
his materials, a little more conscious of the impor- 
tance of careful construction and technique. A 
Pixy in Petticoats is easily the most haphazard 
of his volumes, the one that shifts its key most 
unexpectedly, the one that depends most largely 
upon the element of chance. For three-quarters 
of its length it is a mere light and elusive love 
tale; then suddenly comes calamity out of a clear 
sky, and a painful psychological problem is thrust 



JOHN TREVENA 331 

forward; — what effect will the discovery that a 
man is hideously disfigured for life have upon a 
woman whose love for him began largely in ad- 
miration of his good looks? And, after all, this 
problem is not solved because chance again inter- 
venes to end it brutally with the man's death. 

Arminel of the West shows already an advance, 
a growing interest in more serious and widespread 
problems. The central idea is the fallacy of the 
sheltered life form of education. More spe- 
cifically, the theme of Arminel of the West is 
the entanglement of a certain Brian Challa- 
combe, a stranger who comes to the moors for his 
health, in the lives of two girls of the district — 
Nona Wistman, the daughter of a highly culti- 
vated but fanatical preacher ; and Arminel, the il- 
legitimate child of a certain Dartmoor John, a 
peddler of oil, with a small holding of land on 
the moors that he has acquired, not by ancestral 
right, as other commoners do, but by craft and 
guile. By birth and breeding and opportunities in 
life, Nona should have been a fine, clean-souled, 
cultured type of girl, and Arminel an underbred, 
bold-mannered upstart. Mr. Trevena, however, 
evidently has his own very excellent theories about 
the evils of the " sheltered life " method of educa- 
tion. The fanatical Mr. Wistman has chosen to 
bring up his daughter in fundamental ignorance 
of the primary physiological facts of life; with- 



JOHN TREVENA 

out consulting her wishes, her temperament, her 
mental and physical needs, he predestines her to a 
life in the cloister; and when she comes to him, 
full of the irrepressible enthusiasms of youth, the 
tumultuous joy of living, to ask him questions that 
arise naturally and spontaneously to her lips, and 
to demand some share of the freedom and priv- 
ileges that are freely accorded to other girls, he 
puts her off with subterfuges and lies. Arminel, 
on the other hand, growing up haphazard to run 
wild like the Dartmoor furze and glean a knowl- 
edge of life as she will, develops, like the furze, 
strong and sturdy, with an inborn power of self- 
protection, a sharpness of tongue and prickliness 
of manner that will keep off an unwelcome touch. 
Yet, because of this free untrammeled life, she 
has grown up brave and true and tender-hearted 
within, a creature whom people come to love in 
spite of prejudice. While Nona, on the other 
hand, because of her repressed life, is full of a 
spirit of revolt, ready at a touch to blaze out into 
defiance of all laws, human and divine. These are 
the reasons why, when Brian Challacombe comes 
to Dartmoor, he can win Nona without the asking 
and with no saving ceremony of the church, while 
Arminel he can hardly win at all, though he asks 
in all humbleness and with every honorable intent. 
But Challacombe is a weakling, morally as well as 
physically; and, although Arminel has flourished 



JOHN TREVENA 

under adversity, growing stronger and sweeter, 
like the heather itself under the storm and stress 
of sweeping winds, not even her hardly won love 
can inspire him to a true manliness. We leave him 
wavering, temporizing, impotently seeking, when 
too late, to do what is fair and right, and con- 
fronted on the one hand by an angry father, de- 
manding that he shall make the daughter the tardy 
reparation of marriage, and on the other by the 
lawful claims of the other girl, whom he has 
secretly wedded yet does not dare openly to ac- 
knowledge, because of her lowly origin. In spite 
of its big advance upon A Pixy in Petticoats, there 
is about Arminel of the West a certain incon- 
clusiveness which shows the apprentice hand, the 
failure of the young artist to take his own full 
measure. 

In Furze the Cruel and in Heather and Granite 
which followed it, we find the author deliberately 
undertaking a task of far bigger magnitude, a 
trilogy of epic sweep in its conception, with a wise 
and easily comprehended symbolism underlying it. 
As Mr. Trevena himself explains it, "Almost 
everywhere on Dartmoor are Furze, Heather and 
Granite. The Furze seems to suggest Cruelty, 
the Heather Endurance, and the Granite Strength. 
The Furze is destroyed by fire, but grows again ; 
the Heather is torn by winds, but blossoms again ; 
the Granite is worn away imperceptibly by the 



SS4i JOHN TREVENA 

rain." In these three symbols, he finds typified the 
dominant traits of the Dartmoor folk, as he has 
come to know them, — perhaps, also, in a broader 
way, the traits which everywhere, and at all times, 
have had the largest share in the molding of so- 
ciety and of nations. And in making a trilogy of 
these three symbols, he seems to be trying to say 
that the world is not wholly cruel, nor is the vic- 
tory always to the strong, nor always to patience 
and long suffering. But from the blending of 
these three things, we get a pretty good present- 
ment of real life. In other words, for the purpose 
of his art, he has chosen to present three con- 
trasted aspects of life, each, taken by itself, a little 
extreme, a little violent in its effects, — much after 
the fashion that experimenters in color photogra- 
phy make three separate transparencies, in red, 
green and violet, neither of them claiming to be 
quite true to life, but all three producing, when 
blended, a faithful reproduction of each delicate 
tint and shadow. 

Furze the Cruel, considered in this light, simply 
as one of a succession of screens through which the 
finished picture is to be viewed, is not merely a 
piece of clear-sighted, virile realism ; it is in many 
ways an astonishing book ; one may even say, with- 
out fear of contradiction, that no other book has 
succeeded in symbolizing the cruelty of life with 
such poignant and convincing power, since Frank 



JOHN TREVENA 335 

Norris first burst upon the world with the crude 
genius of McTeague, Furze the Cruel is not a 
book which profits by a minute analysis of plot. 
There are a score of tangled threads of destiny, 
crossing and recrossing, as the threads of destiny 
always do cross and recross in real life. It is one 
of those books that are spread over a wide canvas, 
and give you a sense of crowds and multitudes and 
clashing interests ; there is no one man or woman 
in it whom you may single out as the central figure ; 
indeed, if half a dozen different readers should 
make the attempt, they would probably hit upon 
half a dozen different heroes or heroines, and not 
be quite satisfied with any one of them. The truth 
is that the real protagonist of the book is the 
Furze itself, the incarnate symbol of the spirit of 
cruelty in nature and in man — it is the Furze that 
you must think of, first, last and all the time, as 
you read — the Furze that defies extermination; 
that, no matter how you hack and dig and burn its 
roots, springs up again, grim and indomitable; 
and if the chief characters in the book are morally 
warped and misshapen, it is because they, too, 
have sprung from the soil which gives birth to the 
Furze ; and when, in the end, Pendoggat, the cruel- 
est, thorniest man of them all, meets a hideous 
fate, it is no small tribute to the crude force of 
the story to say that one feels there is a certain 
symbolic justice that he should receive his pun- 



336 JOHN TREVENA 

ishment through the instrumentality of the Furze 
itself. If for no other reason than for the 
episode of the fate of Pendoggat, it should take a 
permanent place in any treatise on the technique of 
fiction, as an almost unique illustration of the art 
of making the punishment fit the crime. The 
hideous picture of Pendoggat, miser, coward, thief, 
without one tender, redeeming trait, one vestige of 
a moral sense, caught at last in the very center of 
a huge clump of burning furze, struggling and 
writhing in its tangles like a wild beast, torn and 
scarred by its briars, and finally feeling the blast- 
ing breath of the flames roll past to leave him a 
quivering, blackened, blinded thing, still grasping 
in his helpless fingers the ashes of the fortune for 
which he had sinned — this picture in its relentless 
grimness recalls only one parallel in our recent 
fiction; that of the death of S. Behrman in The 
Octopus, by Frank Norris, in which the man who 
for years has robbed others of their rightful profit 
in wheat, robbed them of land and money and of 
hope, at last pays a righteous penalty in the 
black depths of the hold of a freight steamer, slip- 
ping and scrambling and writhing through the lin- 
gering agony of strangulation under the steady, 
relentless downpour of unnumbered tons of wheat. 
Undoubtedly, Furze the Cruel still stands as its 
author's biggest achievement, just as the first 
volume in the Epic of the Wheat was the biggest 



JOHN TREVENA 337 

book of Norris, the man with whom it seems in- 
evitable to compare him. They have in common a 
love of big ideas, recurrent symbols, a dogged in- 
sistence that drives home a meaning by suggest- 
ing the same thought in many different forms. 
Also they have in common a soaring fancy, the 
gift of seeing visions beyond their power to repro- 
duce. Already in Heather there is a sense of some- 
thing wanting; the brutal strength of Furze the 
Cruel would have been out of place, but another 
kind of strength was needed, and it is not there. 
Heather has a number of commendable qualities, 
but it is not a strong book. In fact, of all his 
volumes it is the one which has faded out most 
rapidly, leaving only the faintest of blurs upon 
the memory of the present writer. Curiously 
enough, it called forth, at the time of its appear- 
ance, more favorable comment than its predecessor. 
A possible explanation of this is that in Heather 
we have, in addition to the Dartmoor folk, — who, 
as a steady diet, eventually weary the mental 
palate, — the inmates of a sanitarium, people of 
various grades of society and coming from widely 
separated corners of England, but all having in 
common the quality of representing the outside 
point of view, of making the reader feel that even 
on the wind-swept moors he is still in touch with 
the world at large. But to one who reads be- 
tween the lines, it looks as though the Dartmoor 



338 JOHN TREVENA 

folk had by this time begun to pall upon Mr. Tre- 
vena himself, — and you cannot write entertain- 
ingly of what has ceased to interest you. 

Granite, the third volume in the trilogy, has not 
been published in America, and I have not had 
access to the English edition. It is, of course, not 
only uncritical but unfair to draw conclusions 
from so arbitrary and erratic a criterion as the 
non-placing of American book-rights to an English 
novel. Yet the failure to publish the third volume 
of a series, thus leaving the trilogy a dismembered 
torso, suggests a suspicion that the falling off 
already apparent in Heather, may have been 
cumulative in Granite. 

There remains only BracJcen, which, if it came 
from an unknown writer, would call for no men- 
tion at all, but which, because it represents a 
strange and regrettable aberration on the part of 
a man of serious promise, seems to demand a vigor- 
ous protest. It possesses the dubious distinction 
of being the most repulsive book that I have read in 
many years. In Furze the Cruel, Mr. Trevena 
first gave evidence of a tendency to see and picture 
life symbolically. But Bracken' is symbolism run- 
ning amuck, a weird, creepy, madhouse symbolism, 
suggestive of things in heaven and earth of which 
it is not good to dream in any man's philosophy. 
That the book has a morbid, unclean, uncanny sort 
of strength it would be idle to deny. There are 



JOHN TREVENA SS9 

single sentences in it that send little shuddering 
waves of revulsion and dread up and down the 
spinal column ; there are chapters that do not con- 
duce to sleep. Now, the only excuse a writer can 
offer for inflicting upon his readers a succession of 
ugly pictures of mental and moral depravity, hyp- 
notic powers abused to evil ends, a whole gamut of 
sin and sensuality, is that he has some criticism 
upon life which he can express in this way and in 
no other, — and furthermore, he must succeed in 
expressing it clearly. The great and unpardon- 
able fault of Bracken is, not that it is unpleasant, 
but that it fails to be intelligible. The symbolism 
of the title is simple enough, the trouble does not 
begin there. Bracken, the rank, riotous, rapid- 
growing fern-plant, sole survivor in England of 
the carboniferous period, stands as a link with the 
past, a symbol of the primordial, a reminder of 
the stability of life on earth, and of the compara- 
tively narrow space that separates the cave man 
from his brother of to-day. But it is when we 
penetrate a little beyond the opening chapter, 
heavy-laden with its title of " Cryptogamous," and 
try to follow the mental processes of Jasper Ram- 
ridge, staid man of letters who turns astrologer; 
of Cuthbert Or ton, who, from sullen schoolboy, un- 
naturally wise, becomes materialist, sensualist, 
whose one cult is himself; of Claud Yalland, con- 
tented to live in squalor, so that he may be a 



340 JOHN TREVENA 

poet; of Theodore Vipont, the simple, rabbit-like 
little antiquary, with his passion for old pewter 
and his passion for his only child, Margaret; — 
that we find ourselves losing our bearings in a fog 
of words. From a long series of repellent scenes, 
just a few facts stand out clear: That Margaret 
Vipont is a sort of female Dr. Jekyll, with three 
personalities instead of two; that originally the 
spiritual side of her nature is uppermost, that she 
is a sensitive, tremulous, frail little creature, 
moved to emotions that are almost pain, by the 
song of a bird, the fragrance of a flower ; that un- 
der the malignant spell of Cuthbert Orton, the 
spirit vanishes and the flesh awakens, and without 
warning she becomes a foul-mouthed, vulgar 
termagant, utterly unmoral, an offense against 
decency; and that when Jasper Ramridge's 
stronger influence overmasters that of Cuthbert, 
both spirit and flesh make way for mind, and Mar- 
garet becomes a sexless, soulless thinking machine, 
without emotion and without mercy, and avenges 
herself for a ruined life in a way that leaves no 
record beyond a few transient bubbles in a lonely 
swamp. 

Such are the impressions left by this huge, 
unwieldy product of misdirected eff^ort. It leaves 
one asking impotently under what spell Mr. 
Trevena can have fallen that he should forswear 
his old creed and fall to worshipping at the 



JOHN TREVENA 341 

shrines of false gods. It is to be fervently hoped 
that this is only a temporary aberration. But at 
least he once gave us Furze the Cruel, and he can- 
not take it from us, even though he should write 
a score of Brackens. 



ROBERT HICHENS 

It is almost a score of years since Mr. Robert 
Hichens first sprang into local notoriety through 
The Green Carnation, which set all London buzzing 
hotly anent the identity of its bold literary and 
social lampoons. It was just ten years later that 
he obtained at last an international recognition, 
with The Garden of Allah, in which for the first 
time, and perhaps for the last, the inherent big- 
ness of his theme and the titanic majesty of his 
setting shook him out of his studied pose of aloof- 
ness and sardonic cynicism, and raised him to un- 
expected heights. And almost at the close of a 
second decade, Mr. Hichens visited America, to 
find himself, for the passing hour, one of the most 
widely discussed of modern novelists, with his latest 
novel giving promise of becoming a " best seller," 
his earlier triumph. The Garden of Allah, demand- 
ing a second recognition in dramatic form, and he 
himself receiving the doubtful tribute of full-page 
interviews in the Sunday supplements. Accord- 
ingly, Mr. Hichens seems to be one of the contem- 
porary British story tellers about whom it is dis- 
tinctly worth while to ask: How much of this 
343 




ROBERT HICHENS 



ROBERT HICHENS 343 

popular acclaim is merited on sound literary 
grounds, and how much of it is not? 

Before attempting to answer specifically this 
natural and legitimate question, it seems profitable 
to call attention to the treatment which Mr. Hich- 
ens has received at the hands of his critics during 
the past eighteen years as an illuminating example 
of the average professional reviewer's shortness of 
memory and lack of prophetic intuition. A glance 
over the files of the leading English literary re- 
views leaves the reader amazed at the suavity with 
which the critics of Mr. Hichens's more recent 
popular triumphs ignore the many harsh asper- 
sions they cast upon his earlier volumes, and the 
completeness with which most of them seem to have 
forgotten their one-time aversion to certain salient 
features of his style, his technique and his attitude 
towards life, all of which are just as marked and 
most of them just as offensive to-day as in the 
days when he was trying to startle a sated public 
into attention, by eccentricities like Flames, The 
Londoners and The Slave, 

For, if we examine Mr. Hichens with dispas- 
sionate frankness, refusing to be dazzled by those 
physical and moral mirages of the desert, of which 
he possesses the incomparable and magic trick, we 
must realize that, although he has gained im- 
mensely in sheer craftsmanship, and although his 
instinct for the unerring right word has become 



344 ROBERT HICHENS 

surer with practice, his verbal color more bril- 
liantly lavish, his style more fluent and less epi- 
grammatically crystalline, his development has 
nevertheless been peculiarly homogeneous and con- 
sistent. That he has grown, it would be idle to 
deny ; but the growth has been logical, and on cer- 
tain definite and predestined lines. His gifts, and 
some of his faults as well, have attained ampler 
dimensions with the passage of years ; but gifts 
and faults alike, there is scarcely one of them, the 
seeds of which might not have been found already 
germinating and taking vigorous root in the now 
almost forgotten Green Carnation. It is worth 
while, as a bit of pertinent literary history, to call 
to mind the terms in which Mr. Arthur Waugh 
first brought this volume to the attention of Ameri- 
can readers, in his monthly London letter to the 
New York Critic: 

At last London has a sensation. The quiet of the 
early autumn is broken by the explosion of a genuine 
bombshell, and every one is rushing to read The 
Green Carnation. ... It is a satire, brilliant and 
scintillating, upon the literary and social affectations 
of the hour; and a more daring, impertinent and al- 
together clever piece of work has not been produced 
for many years. . . . The writer remains anonymous 
and his preference for secrecy is not surprising, for 
if it is possible for good-humored satire to make 
enemies, he would scarcely find a friend left. No- 



ROBERT HICHENS ^45 

body is spared. Mr. Oscar Wilde is, as the title im- 
plies, the principal butt of the brochure, but almost 
every conspicuous writer and personage is touched to 
the quick. 

From the very nature of its naked and un- 
ashamed personalities, this first volume was 
handled rather gingerly by the reviewers, most of 
whom were fain to dismiss it, after the euphemistic 
manner of the Academy, as a mere " caricature of 
an affectation in life and literature, an abnormal- 
ity, a worship of abstract and scarlet sin, which 
must by its very nature pass away with the per- 
sonality that first flaunted it before a wondering, 
half-attracted, half-revolted world." To-day the 
unwholesome interest of its theme has passed away 
like a whifF of foul gas ; and in its place remains 
the interest of the human document, for it shows 
that the author was even then, just as he is to-day, 
concerned primarily with the abnormalities of life, 
seeking by preference the tainted mind, the 
stunted soul, the pathological body. In spite of 
a life-long straining after startling effects, Mr. 
Hichens has no great and original fertility of 
plot. Many another novelist before him has built 
stories upon the themes of metempsychosis ; of a 
woman's slavery to the glitter of jewels or to the 
fool's paradise of opium; of hereditary fires of 
passion, that betray a bridegroom on his honey- 
moon into forgetting the marriage service, or a 



346 ROBERT HICHENS 

renegade monk into breaking his vows. Mr. Hicli- 
ens's distinction lies rather in his special gift for 
taking world-old problems and modernizing them, 
warming them over to suit a jaded palate, with a 
dash of the decadent spirit and a garniture of 
Fleurs de Mai, Any one who has read Henry 
James's Ambassadors must remember the sensa- 
tions of the mild and scholarly Mr. Strethers dur- 
ing his first afternoon in Chad Newsome's Paris 
apartment, while he listens to the conversation 
going on blithely and carelessly around him, and 
wonders helplessly whether all those well-dressed, 
well-mannered guests really mean all the unspeak- 
able things that they seem to be uttering, or 
whether his own mind has suddenly become 
strangely perverted and is playing him tricks. 
The episode inevitably comes to mind in connec- 
tion with Mr. Hichens's novels, for it precisely 
portrays the impression that, with malice afore- 
thought, he contrives to leave upon the mind of his 
readers. He seems to delight in bringing them to 
a sudden full stop, with a gasping protest, 
" Surely, he never could mean that ! " — and then, 
at the turn of the page, leaving them with a be- 
wildered and shamefaced wonderment how they 
could have entertained, even for a moment, such 
outrageously indecent thoughts ! 

That this is no arbitrary and one-sided view of 
Robert Hichens, any one may readily convince 



ROBERT HICHENS 347 

himself by merely taking the trouble to glance over 
the contemporary reviews of his several books. 
These reviews, with few exceptions, and quite re- 
gardless of their favorable or unfavorable tone, 
form a rich thesaurus of the various English 
synonyms, — and sometimes the French synonyms 
as well, when Anglo-Saxon resources run low, — 
of such words as morbid, neurotic, pathological, 
decadent, salacious and unclean. It is true that 
since the appearance of The Garden of Allah, less 
emphasis has been laid upon the unwholesomeness 
of Mr. Hichens's themes, and more upon the vivid 
color and scintillating brilliance of his style. It 
may even be conceded that there is justice in this 
change, and that, on the whole, his later books are 
more normal, more human, than his earlier. 
Nevertheless, the taint persists. There is no es- 
caping the obvious fact that his interest is always 
in the exceptional, rather than in the average, 
type. Strange people, bizarre customs, alien skies, 
men and women vainly struggling against some 
overmastering obsession, physical disability or 
mental lesion, a long nightmare procession of the 
socially and morally unfit, — such, as they mentally 
file before us, is the impression left by the leading 
characters of Mr. Hichens's novels. 

Now the fault with Mr. Hichens is not too great 
a frankness about life. It is not that he looks 
upon the world without illusions, recognizing the 



348 ROBERT HICHENS 

plague-spots of human nature and ruthlessly 
stripping them bare. A bold, uncompromising 
handling of hypocrisy and avarice, frailty and vice 
is one of the canons of the realistic creed. There 
is more disease and degradation in Zola's Lourdes 
than in all the pages ever penned by the author of 
The Black Spaniel. And the reason why The 
Black Spaniel is an unwholesome book, while 
Lourdes is not, is simply this : That when he has 
occasion to expose the ugliness of life, Mr. Hich- 
ens, unlike Zola, either cannot or will not emulate 
the purely scientific zeal of the surgeonj dissecting 
away a diseased tissue. Underneath the surface 
impersonality of the realist, one discerns a spirit of 
prying and unwholesome curiosity, gloating over 
the forbidden and the unclean. " When I am 
what is called wicked, it is my mood to be evil," 
are the words that Mr. Hichens puts into the 
mouth of Reggie Hastings, in The Green Carna- 
tion. " I must drink absinthe, and hang the night 
hours with scarlet embroideries ; I must have music 
and the sins that march to music." And, if we are 
content not to stretch the comparison unduly, 
these phrases are not a bad characterization of the 
salient qualities of much of Mr. Hichens's fiction. 
He, too, is fond of hanging the night hours with 
scarlet embroideries, of showing us sins that keep 
pace to sensuous rhythms. Like the French artist, 
Fromentin, one of Mr. Hichens's forerunners in 



ROBERT HICHENS 349 

discovering and interpreting Algeria, he has suf- 
fered from an innate tendency to see what is pic- 
turesque, spectacular, even pretty, rather than 
what is truly great; and, as with Fromentin, Al- 
geria taught him how to do the bigger thing. It 
was not until he replaced his " scarlet embroid- 
eries " with the vast monochrome of the African 
sky, the tinkle of drawing-room music with the 
sublimity of desert silence and solitude, that he 
attained, for once at least, an epic amplitude of 
canvas and of theme. 

As a bold and effective colorist, Mr. Hichens 
deserves cordial commendation. His skill in vivid 
pictorial description is beyond dispute. Whether 
it be a glimpse of a crowded London street, the 
turquoise blue of Italian sea and sky, or the burn- 
ing reach of sun-ravished desert, his printed words 
seem to open up a vista of light and warmth, a mov- 
ing picture wrought of dissolving and opalescent 
hues. His colors lack the riotous romanticism of a 
Theophile Gautier, the wistful melancholy of a 
Pierre Loti, the frankly pagan sensuousness of a 
d'Annunzio,- — yet he owes something of its varied 
richness to each of these. It is obvious that he loves 
color for its own sake, — much as his heroine in 
The Slave loves the gleam of jewels, — and flings 
it on lavishly, just as he flings on other forms of 
ornamentation, purely decorative in purpose, with 
the result that his backgrounds are often crowded 



S50 ROBERT HICHENS 

with superfluous and confusing detail. This tend- 
ency has grown upon him year by year ; it is only 
in his shorter stories that he has learned the value 
of restraint. The Garden of Allah, Bella Donna, 
The Fruitful Vine, one and all would have gained 
much by a well-advised and ruthless pruning. 

There is a popular impression that Mr. Hichens 
is a writer of uncommon versatility ; and when we 
consider that his themes range from the morphine 
habit to the transmigration of souls, and his stage 
settings from a London drawing-room to the Sa- 
hara desert, and from the Nile to the Italian lakes, 
this impression seems at least superficially justi- 
fied. But when we begin carefully to sift them 
over and mentally slip each plot into its respective 
pigeon-hole, we find that, underneath all his shift- 
ing scenes and varied topics, Mr. Hichens's inter- 
est in life narrows down to just one form of 
obsession, namely, the study of human imperfec- 
tion, the analysis of those various lesions in body, 
mind or soul which, like a flaw in the heart of a 
gem, brand certain men and women as unfit, — 
at best, to be classed as eccentrics, and at worst 
as monstrosities. Viewed from this point, his 
themes fall naturally under three heads: first, his 
social satires, or studies of the passing fads, 
foibles, petty vices and hypocrisies on which the 
world of fashion smiles indulgently ; secondly, cer- 
tain mental delusions, occult phenomena, psycho- 



ROBERT HICHENS 351 

pathic hallucinations, such as form the underly- 
ing idea of stories of The Black Spaniel type, — in 
which each reader must decide for himself whether 
he is reading an allegory, a diagnosis of a curious 
form of insanity, or a report to the Society for 
Psychical Research; and, thirdly, — and to this 
class belong practically all of Mr. Hichens's later 
serious novels, — studies in moral depravity, 
chronic and often incurable maladies of the human 
soul. 

Because of this threefold classification of his 
stories, it is impracticable to survey Mr. Hichens's 
writings in anything approaching chronological 
order. His sardonic enjoyment of the social ex- 
travagance of the passing hour is more or less ap- 
parent in every book that he writes, and lends 
sharp characterization to many an unforgettable 
minor character. Yet the only volume since The 
Green Carnation in which it would be fair to say 
that social satire is, first, last and all the time, the 
main issue, is The Londoners, in which the pre- 
tensions of smart society, the pomps and vanities 
of Mayfair, are, as Mr. Hichens's own sub-title 
implies, reduced to an absurdity. Of the second 
class of plots, or those dealing with occultism and 
pseudo-psychic phenomena of the Jekyll-Hyde or- 
der, we have, besides The Black Spaniel, a number 
of weird and fantastic short tales and two novels, 
Flames: A London Phantasy, one of his earliest 



352 ROBERT HICHENS 

efforts, and The Dweller on the Threshold, which 
is one of his most recent. This group of stories 
represent various degrees of cleverness ; but they 
one and all leave the impression that the author 
has not put the best of himself into them. They 
simply are the embodiment of certain fantastic 
ideas which in hours of perversity happened to riot 
through his brain, and which later he could not 
bring himself wholly to reject. There is a loath- 
some and uncanny horror about a theme like that 
of The Black Spaniel, that obviously fastened 
leech-like upon the abnormal side of Mr. Hichens's 
nature and refused to let go its hold. Yet, even 
in this instance, the strongest of all his occult hor- 
ror tales, the thing is not quite achieved. By 
over-insistence upon obvious details, by under- 
estimating the intelligence of his readers and ex- 
plaining his meaning in words of one syllable, as 
though to an audience of little children, he defeats 
his purpose, and destroys the last vestige of 
plausibility. Mr. Hichens is too much of the 
earth, earthy ; he is far too interested in the frail- 
ties and perversions of the flesh, to gain credence 
when writing of the transmigration of souls or the 
vagaries of disembodied spirits. Consequently, it 
is with his third class of stories, serious studies of 
human delinquency, that we must mainly concern 
ourselves, in order to take a fair measure of Mr. 
Hichens, as artist and as student of human nature. 



ROBERT HICHENS 353 

Neither is it worth while to linger over his 
shorter stories, in any of the three subdivisions. 
What has so often been said in regard to the 
collection of Egyptian and Algerian tales that 
swell the volume containing The Black Spaniel to 
its required three hundred and odd pages, namely, 
that they were fugitive pages from his note-book 
for The Garden of Allah, applies in the main to 
most of his shorter efforts. He is essentially a 
writer of the sustained effort type ; and it is con- 
sequently only fair to judge him by his full-length 
volumes. If evidence were needed to support the 
contention that, other things being equal, he min- 
isters by preference to a mind diseased, then such 
a collection of tales as Tongues of Conscience 
would furnish fertile illustrations. There is, for 
instance, the story of the famous painter whose 
peace of mind is destroyed because he holds him- 
self responsible for having inspired a street urchin 
with a passion for the sea, and the boy subse- 
quently was drowned; or again, in "The Cry of 
the Child," we have a young doctor, in whose ears 
there rings ceaselessly the dying cry of his own 
child, whom he had cruelly neglected in its last 
hours ; and still again, in " How Love Came to 
Professor Guildea," we are told how a materialistic 
man of science becomes subject to the obsession of 
a degraded spirit, — a hideous bit of morbidity, 
which might pass for a study in insanity, if the 



354 ROBERT HICHENS 

author had not precluded that explanation by 
showing us the Professor's parrot offering its crest 
to the caresses of unseen fingers, and mimicking 
the endearments of the invisible and loathsome 
visitant. 

But, as it happens, the longer stories are even 
more to our purpose than the short tales. Al- 
ready in 1895, his second published volume. An 
Imaginative Man, clearly reveals the author's nat- 
ural bent. Briefly, it is the story of an intel- 
lectual and highly cultivated man who is destitute 
of natural affections : 

He (Denison) had never loved his kind^ and never 
even followed the humane fashion of pretending to 
love them. ... It amused him to observe them under 
circumstances of excitement, terror or pain, in a climax 
of passion or despair. . . . He liked people when 
they lost their heads, when they became abnormal. 
Anything bizarre attracted him abnormally. 

This curiously unnatural personage marries a 
charming and devoted wife, because he chooses to 
suspect something enigmatic about her. Later, 
when he is forced to recognize that she is normal 
and simple and true-hearted, his interest turns to 
a dislike akin to hatred. Accordingly, he leaves 
her, and, after amusing himself for a time in 
Egypt, watching the impotent rebellion of a boy 



ROBERT HICHENS 355 

in the last stages of consumption, he ends his use- 
less career bj dashing out his brains against the 
Sphinx, with wliich he has perversely become 
enamored. Among the press-clippings of that 
period there is one opinion upon which it would 
be presumptuous to try to improve: 

It is a story to remain a splendid monument to un- 
wholesome fancy^ a thesaurus of morbid suggestion^ 
which exalts mere vulgar suicide into an intellectual 
resource of the weary-minded^ and degrades the hu- 
manity of virtue into mere animal instinct. 

As a companion picture to this unnatural man, 
Mr. Hichens shortly afterwards gave us an equally 
unnatural woman, in the person of Lady Caryll 
Allabruth, the heroine of The Slave. Lady Caryll 
is obsessed by one consuming passion, jewels, — 
by which, of course, Mr. Hichens wishes to sym- 
bolize all the futile luxuries for which women, from 
time immemorial, have sold themselves. She is for- 
tunate in meeting, while still quite young, an 
Anglicized Oriental of great wealth, who can lav- 
ish upon her diamonds, pearls and rubies, who 
understands her through and through, without one 
remnant of flattering illusion, and who actually 
wins her by the dazzling splendor of one huge and 
matchless emerald. It is her own husband who, in 
the course of the story, sums her up as follows : 



356 ROBERT HICHENS 

' She was bom to live in a harem, petted, as an 
animal is petted, adorned with jewels as a sultan's 
favorite is adorned. Such a life would have satisfied 
her nature. Her soul shines like a jewel and is as 
hard. ... A certain class of women has breathed 
through so long a chain of years a fetid at- 
mosphere, of intellectual selfishness, has sold itself, 
body, mind and soul, so repeatedly for hard things 
that glitter, for gold, for diamonds, for the petted 
slave-girl's joys, that humanity has absolutely dwin- 
dled in the race, just as size might dwindle in a race 
breeding in and in with dwarfs. In Caryll, that 
dwindling light of humanity has gone out. My wife 
is not human." 

Now, it is extremely convenient for a woman 
who happens not to be human to have a husband 
who, although aware of the fact, does not seem to 
mind; so it was rather unfortunate for Caryll 
Allabruth that her husband died, ruined by her 
monomania for jewels. In her poverty, however, 
Lady Caryll managed to retain the one matchless 
emerald with which he bad won her. This emer- 
ald is subsequently stolen ; and, since it is the one 
thing left in life for which she cares, and all other 
means of recovering it fail, Lady Caryll consents 
to become the burglar's bride, in order that the 
emerald's green fires may once more burn upon her 
breast. All of which, in spite of its melodramatic 
extravagance, rests upon a foundation of per- 



ROBERT HICHENS 357 

verse and sardonic logic that is eminently char- 
acteristic. 

The next two volumes, in point of time, while 
unmistakably expressing the same outlook upon 
life, show a distinct gain in the direction of so- 
briety and self-restraint. Felix and The Woman 
with the Fan, although neither of them a book 
of real importance in itself, at least revealed 
Mr. Hichens as a novelist worth watching for bet- 
ter reasons than merely because he could attract 
attention with a flow of epigram, as insistent as 
the cracking of a whip. Moreover, although he 
had not learned to draw sympathetic characters, — 
and it is seriously to be questioned whether he ever 
will learn, — he at least began to get rather nearer 
the average human level of understanding than in 
the case of Denison or Lady Caryll. The heroine 
of Felix is not naturally inhuman ; she is simply a 
victim of the drug habit, an unfortunately com- 
mon and pitiable human weakness, although re- 
pulsive and rather nauseating when forced in inti- 
mate detail upon our notice. If Mr. Hichens's 
purpose was to do for the opium habit what Zola 
did for alcohol in UAssommoir, it is a pity that his 
misunderstanding of the realistic method has re- 
sulted in defeating his object. Zola got his ef- 
fects by tireless and uncompromising accumula- 
tion of facts, flung at us almost defiantly, with 
no attempt to palliate or to obscure. What his 



358 ROBERT HICHENS 

characters made of these facts, whether they un- 
derstood them, believed them, acted upon them or 
not, was all of secondary importance ; facts, as 
nearly as he could get them, were the be-all and 
the end-all of his novels, their excuse and apology 
for existence. Mr. Hichens, on the contrary, can- 
not be frank, even if he wants to be ; he always 
proceeds by indirection. It is so much easier to 
suggest than to tell plainly an unsavory fact, and 
then trust the reader's mind to go to greater 
lengths than the printed page would dare to go! 
In Felice we have probably the best and most ex- 
treme case of this method to be found in the whole 
range of its author's writings. Felix himself is in 
no wise abnormal; on the contrary, he is just the 
plain, ordinary variety of young fool, the Kipling 
type of fool, whose rag and bone happens, to his 
more complete undoing, to be further complicated 
with a hypodermic needle. Felix pays a brief visit 
to Paris, where fate wills it that he shall meet a 
certain little tailor who in youth had the honor to 
make Balzac a " pair of trousers without feet," 
and who initiates Felix into the endless delights 
of the Comedie Humaine. This whole episode of 
the little tailor stands out luminously against a 
background of human slime. It is the sort of thing 
that Mr. W. J. Locke can do so supremely well, 
a page that might have fluttered loose from The 
Beloved Vagabond. When the final reckoning of 



ROBERT HICHENS 359 

Mr. Hichens's achievements is to be cast up, this 
little masterpiece of Balzac's tailor ought to count 
heavily on the credit side. 

As for the story of Felix as a whole, it is un- 
deniably strong, — as strong as escaping sewer gas. 
Having read the Comedie Humaine, Felix flatters 
himself that human nature holds no secrets from 
him ; he plunges, hot-headed, into the turbulence of 
London's fast set, men drugged with ambition, 
women drugged with vanity, with avarice, with 
opium. There is an all-pervading sense of some- 
thing unexplained and inexplicable. Felix's inex- 
perience hangs like a heavy veil before our eyes, 
and we are forced to grope with him, to piece 
fragments of evidence together, just as he does, 
and, like him, often to piece them wrong. Espe- 
cially, out of the other loathsome and unclean 
horrors, there looms up, as nauseously offensive as 
some putrescent fungoid growth, a certain corpu- 
lent, bloated, blear-eyed little dog, symbolic of 
human bestiality. The present writer can recall 
no episode in modem fiction, not even in the au- 
dacities of Catulle Mendes, which, after a lapse 
of some years, still brings back the same sickening 
qualm of physical illness. 

The Woman with the Fan, although not by any 
means lacking in audacities, came as a welcome 
contrast to its predecessor. In addition to its odd 
title, it had a somewhat startling cover design, the 



360 ROBERT HICHENS 

nude figure of a woman apparently going through 
some sort of a drill with an open fan. This figure, 
which proves to be a marble statuette known as 
line Danseuse de Tunisie, plays a rather im- 
portant part in the development of the story. It 
is the fan which makes the statuette wicked, one 
of the characters repeatedly insists ; and the 
thought which is symbolized by the statue is that 
of the Eternal Feminine degraded by the artificial 
and the tarnish of mundane life. In applying the 
symbolism of this statuette to his heroine. Lady 
Holme, Mr. Hichens seems to have taken a per- 
verse pleasure in confusing right and wrong, ideal- 
ism and sensuality. Lady Holme's friends con- 
stantly identify her with the statuette, and beg 
her to " throw away her fan," meaning that there 
is a taint of wickedness about her, and that she is 
capable of higher things. The facts in the case, 
however, hardly fit in with this theory. Stripped 
of its symbolism, the book is a study of the two 
elements which go to make up human love, the 
physical attraction and the psychological. Viola 
Holme is a woman in whom the finer elements of 
character lie dormant. She is married to a man 
of the big, athletic, primitive sort, " a slave to 
every impulse born of passing physical sensa- 
tions." She knows that of poetry, music, and all 
the finer things of life he has not, and never will 
have, the slightest comprehension. She knows, too, 



ROBERT HICHENS 361 

that he loves her only for the surface beauty of 
her hair, her eyes, her symmetry of face and form, 
and that if she lost that beauty on the morrow, 
his love would go with it. And yet she loves him, 
in spite of his crudeness and his many infidelities, 
because he satisfies the demands of that side of her 
nature which is the strongest, — the side which 
" holds the fan." Other men, the men who urge 
her to " throw the fan away," offer her a different 
kind of love, because there are times when they 
see in her eyes and hear in her voice, when she 
sings morbid little verses from d'Annunzio, the 
promise of deeper emotions than her husband ever 
dreamed her capable of. Now, a woman of Viola 
Holme's temperament would never voluntarily 
" throw aside her fan," and Mr. Hichens is a 
sufficiently keen judge of women to be aware of it. 
Nothing short of an accident in which the statuette 
is broken will accomplish this miracle. So fate 
is invoked, in the shape of an overturned automo- 
bile, and Lady Holme struggles back to conscious- 
ness, to find her famous beauty gone forever. In 
its place is a mere caricature of a human face, a 
spectacle so repellent that, of all the men who 
formerly professed to worship the " inner beauty 
of her soul," only one has the courage to renew 
his vows, and he a poor, broken-down inebriate, as 
sad a wreck as herself. Such, in bare outline, is 
the story of The Lady with the Fan, and each 



362 ROBERT HICHENS 

reader may apply the symbolism to suit himself. 
A hasty, snap-shot interpretation would be that 
Lady Holme would have become a better woman, 
mentally and morally, if she had discarded her 
coarse-minded husband and replaced him with a 
lover of more artistic temperament. But such an 
interpretation would do scant justice to Mr. Hich- 
ens's subtlety. The physical and spiritual ele- 
ments of love, he seems to say, are too curiously 
intermeshed to be readily separated; there is no 
love so earthly that it does not get a glimmer of 
higher things, no love so pure and idyllic that it 
does not crave some slight concession to the flesh. 
If she would hold love, the modern woman must 
be content to remain a little lower than the angels, 
she must hold to her fan. 

In spite of the implied confession of weakness 
in solving a rather big problem with the unsatis- 
factory makeshift of an accident, The Woman 
with a Fan is obviously, even now as we look at it 
in the light of his later achievements, so much big- 
ger and stronger and more vital than all that went 
before it, that The Garden of Allah, when it fol- 
lowed shortly afterwards, ought not to have been the 
surprise that it actually was. Of this book, the 
one really big and enduring contribution that Mr. 
Hichens has made to modern fiction, there is really 
absurdly little to say. It is so simple, so elemental, 
SO inevitable In all its parts. It may be epitomized 



ROBERT HICHENS 363 

with more brevity than many a short story. There 
is a certain Trappist monk, Androvsky, whoj after 
twenty years of silent obedience to his order, 
breaks his vows, escapes from bondage, and, meet- 
ing Domini Enfilden, an independent English girl 
with a lawless strain of gipsy blood in her veins, 
woes her with a gauche and timid ardor, and car- 
ries her off for a mad, fantastic honeymoon into 
the heart of the African desert. The desert, so 
says a Moorish proverb, is the Garden of Allah; 
and here the renegade monk, fleeing from his con- 
science, with confession ever hovering on his lips, 
and doubly punished through dread of the anguish 
awaiting his innocent bride when enlightenment 
comes to her, finds the solitude too vast, the isola- 
tion too terrifying, the imminence of divine wrath 
too overwhelming to be borne. It drives him back 
to the haunts of men, even in the face of a pre- 
monition that amounts to certainty, that his secret 
must be laid bare and his short-lived and forbidden 
joy be ended. Now the theme of a man breaking 
the holiest vows for the unlawful love of a woman 
is one of the commonplaces in the history of fic- 
tion. It is the majestic simplicity of his materials, 
the isolation of his man and his woman, the sublim- 
ity of his remote, unfathomable background, that 
combine to raise this exceptional book almost to 
the epic dignity of the First Fall of Man. As has 
already been insisted, in connection with each sue- 



364 ROBERT HICHENS 

ceeding book, Mr. Hichens does not possess the 
faculty of frankness. That Boris Androvsky is a 
sinner, bearing the burden of an unpardonable and 
nameless misdeed, is a fact that we grasp almost 
at the outset; but Mr. Hichens would have been 
false to his own nature, if he had not, before re- 
vealing the secret, forced us to suspect his hero 
of every known crime against man, nature and 
God. But suddenly his theme seems to have taken 
possession of him, to have raised him against his 
will, perhaps without his knowledge, out of the 
pettiness and subterfuge that have dwarfed so 
much of his work, into the full light of truth and 
sympathy and understanding. In a certain sense, 
the book seems to have written itself; it is a fan- 
tastic piece of word-painting, done with a trop- 
ical luxuriance of color, a carnival of Algerian 
pageantry and African sunshine ; and everywhere 
and all the time, is an all-pervading sense of the 
mystery, the languor, the thousand blending sights 
and sounds and scents of the Orient. Long after 
the final page is turned, you cannot shut out from 
your eyes the memory of the desert, " with its 
pale sands and desolate cities, its ethereal mys- 
teries of mirage, its tragic splendors of color, of 
tempest and of heat " ; you cannot forget the 
throbbing pulsations of burning air, the vast end- 
less monochrome of earth and sky, the primeval 
tragedy of an erring man and woman, helpless 



ROBERT HICHENS 365 

motes in the glare of universal sunshine, impo- 
tently fleeing from an avenging God. It is this one 
book which entitles Mr. Hichens to a serious con- 
sideration among the novelists of to-day. Without 
it, he could have safely been passed over in silence. 
It follows that, in various degrees, all the books 
that Mr. Hichens has given us since The Garden 
of Allah are in the nature of an anti-climax ; and 
for that reason they may be somewhat briefly and 
summarily dismissed. One recalls with a certain 
amount of cordial appreciation another and 
briefer story of Algeria called Barhary Sheep, — 
a book that owes its charm chiefly to its delicate 
and almost flawless artistry, and its lack of any 
pretension to be more than it actually is. Just a 
bit of idle playing with fire, a young English 
couple gaining their first glimpse of African life 
and African temperament ; and while the husband 
spends his days, and sometimes the nights, tire- 
lessly hunting Barbary Sheep, the young wife, 
restless, unsatisfied, craving excitement, is drifting 
rashly into an extremely dangerous intimacy with 
a cultured and suave young Arab, an officer in one 
of the native regiments. What might so easily 
have become a tragedy is brought to a safe and 
final solution by the removal of the Arab from 
further participation, through his death at the 
hands of a fanatical dervish. And to the end we 
have the delicious irony of the utter unconscious- 



366 ROBERT HICHENS 

ness of the phlegmatic English husband, so intent 
on Barbary Sheep that he passes his wife, where 
she crouches among the rocks, in the desert moon- 
light, equally unsuspecting, as he passes, the 
menace of her Arab lover, and the death-blow that 
an instant later removes that menace. 

Then we have the much overpraised Sicilian 
story, The Call of the Blood, and its stronger and 
more sanely appraised sequel, A Spirit in Prison. 
Aside from an almost pagan frankness in their 
unashamed recognition of physical passion, these 
are conspicuously clean volumes, with little if any- 
thing of the author's earlier perversity. The 
chief weakness in The Call of the Blood lies in the 
unconvincing character of the leading episode, the 
one upon which the whole structure of the story 
hinges : namely, the fact that Hermione, the young 
English wife of Maurice Delarey, feels herself com- 
pelled to leave him before their honeymoon in 
Sicily is half over, in order to hasten to the bed- 
side of Emile Artois, the Frenchman who has long 
been in love with her, and who is said to be dying. 
During the brief weeks of her absence, her hus- 
band, who has inherited through his grandmother 
a strain of Sicilian blood, yields to the call of this 
remote strain and falls under the spell of a young 
peasant girl's transient beauty, promptly paying 
the penalty of death at the hands of the peasant 
girl's kinsmen. Of the true facts of this tragedy 



ROBERT HICHENS 367 

Hermione is never told; she knows only that her 
husband was drowned, and that she lost some 
precious weeks of happiness by her absence at 
the bedside of the Frenchman whom she did not 
love and who has lived, while the Englishman whom 
she did love has died. So, believing him to be the 
perfect type of honor and fidelity, she consecrates 
herself to lifelong widowhood. 

It is at this point that The Call of the Blood 
breaks off, with a young and still beautiful woman 
wasting her best years in mourning for an un- 
worthy man, while the right man, who knows the 
truth and might easily win her if he chose to speak, 
feels that his lips are sealed by his unwillingness 
to destroy her ideal. A Spirit in Prison takes up 
the story some seventeen years later. The scene 
is no longer Sicily, but a tiny island in the Bay of 
Naples, to which the widowed bride retired at the 
time of her bereavement, to await the birth of her 
child, and in which she and Vere, the daughter, 
now a girl of sixteen, still have their home. The 
Sicilian peasant girl, for whom Hermione's hus- 
band proved false to her, also had a child, who is 
now a sturdy young fisher lad, with eyes that are 
strangely reminiscent of some one whom Hermione 
has known, some one in the distant past whom she 
either cannot or will not name even to herself. Her 
attention is first called to the fisher lad by the in- 
terest that he awakens in her daughter, Vere ; for 



368 ROBERT HICHENS 

the girl, by some curious instinct, has recognized 
the ties of kinship and has made the boy her 
protege and comrade. It takes very little time for 
Artois, who still loves Hermione with patient hope- 
lessness, and for Gaspare, her faithful old servant, 
to learn the truth about the boy's parentage ; and 
these two men instinctively conspire to keep Her- 
mione in ignorance. But by doing so they uncon- 
sciously prolong her suffering; because her spirit 
is struggling in the prison of delusion, and can win 
freedom, and with it love and happiness, only 
through full knowledge of the truth. Altogether, 
these two volumes make up a strong, clean, tender 
human story, admirably handled to bring out all 
the values that the plot contains. It revealed Mr. 
Hichens as an interpreter of Italian life somewhere 
midway between Richard Bagot and Marion Craw- 
ford, less pedantic than the former, yet lacking the 
geniality of the creator of Saracinesca, 

Mr. Hichens might, had he chosen, have gone on 
indefinitely from this point, doing the fairly in- 
nocuous, fairly entertaining sort of story, and let- 
ting us little by little forget the days when a new 
volume from his pen meant an alternate gasp and 
shudder at the turn of each page. But it is not 
in his nature to be content with doing the innoc- 
uous thing. He insists upon being conspicuous; 
and if the only way of being conspicuous is to 
shock a startled world into attention, he stands 



ROBERT HICHENS 369 

ready to do so. Just two more novels demand 
a passing word: Bella Donna and The Fruitful 
Vine. Of these two, the former is of no special 
importance, either in theme or in detail, — although 
in its heroine he has created one more unwhole- 
some and abnormal type that lingers in the 
memory. At the opening of the story, Mrs. Chep- 
stow is summed up as " a great beauty in de- 
cline": 

Her day of glory had been fairly long, but now 
it seemed to be over. She was past forty. She said 
she was thirty-eight, but she was over forty. Good- 
ness, some say^ keeps women fresh. Mrs. Chepstow 
had tried a great many means of keeping fresh, but 
she had omitted that. 

The facts about Mrs. Chepstow, which Mr. 
Hichens regards as of moment, are that in the 
zenith of her youth and beauty she was divorced 
by her husband; that, having made a failure of 
one life, she resolved that she would make a suc- 
cess of another ; that for a long time she kept men 
at her feet, ministering to her desires, — and then 
suddenly, as she approached forty, " the roseate 
hue faded from her life, and a grayness began to 
fall over it." In other words, to catalogue the 
book roughly, it is one more of the many studies 
devoted to VAutomne d'une Femme. And so, at 
the opening of the volume, we meet Mrs. Chepstow, 



370 ROBERT HICHENS 

in the consulting-room of a famous specialist, Dr. 
Meyer Isaacson, confiding to him certain facts 
about herself, physical, mental and moral facts, 
which the reader is not allowed to overhear, which 
the woman herself never alludes to again, but 
which Mr. Hichens has no intention of allowing the 
reader to cease for one moment to ponder over, 
with a more or less prurient curiosity. Inci- 
dentally, — and to this extent alone is her con- 
fession justified structurally, — it is the memory 
of what she confided to him that at a crucial hour 
hurries Dr. Isaacson on a desperate, headlong 
Odyssey to the Nile, in order to save a friend and 
keep Mrs. Chepstow from the sin of murder. But 
all of this is, frankly, rather cheap stuff, and quite 
unworthy of the author of The Garden of Allah. 
It makes a normal-minded reader somewhat exas- 
perated to see a rather rare talent deliberately 
misused. 

Only one other volume. The Fruitful Vine, re- 
mains for discussion. The setting is modern 
Rome, the leading characters two married couple, 
both English, Sir Theodore Cannynge and his 
wife, Dolores, Sir Theodore's closest friend, 
Francis Denzil and his wife Edna — and just one 
Italian, Cesare Carelli. Cannynge, having lost his 
first love in a painful tragedy years before, re- 
mained unmarried almost until middle age. At 
the opening of the story Dolores has for ten years 



ROBERT HICHENS 371 

been his wife, but no children have come to them. 
Whatever regrets he may have felt have remained 
unspoken; until within a year his whole interest 
seemed to center in his diplomatic career, first in 
one European capital, then in. another. But when 
the inheritance of an independent fortune came 
almost simultaneously with the loss of his great 
ambition, the Austrian Embassy, in a moment of 
pique he resigned, and from that time on had 
more time for thought than was good for him. 
Finally comes the day when, fresh from a visit to 
Denzil's home, full of the merriment of children's 
voices, he catches up his wife's Chinese poodle by 
the throat and, while the miserable little beast 
writhes and coughs and blinks, tells her violently : 
" Look at it ! This is all we've got, you and I, to 
make a home — after ten years 1 " Dolores is not 
surprised ; she has felt instinctively that sooner or 
later this outbreak was bound to come. None the 
less it hurts her — just as every one of his almost 
daily visits to Denzil's home, blessed with a fruit- 
ful vine in place of a barren one, has hurt her. 
She is not jealous of Edna, Denzil's wife, al- 
though she knows that the idle gossip of Rome has 
settled their relations for them. The Roman 
world would be incapable of understanding that 
the attraction might be the children and not the 
woman. Dolores's troubles, however, are only just 
beginning. Francis Denzil, husband of " the hap- 



372 ROBERT HICHENS 

piest woman in Rome," is suddenly stricken down 
with cancer of the larynx, is operated upon and 
never rallies. His last request is that Sir Theo- 
dore will be a second father to his little son — and 
Sir Theodore promises. From this time onward, 
Dolores sees less and less of her husband; a vi- 
carious fatherhood has taken possession of him, 
absorbed him, made him a new man. When the 
summer comes, he disappoints her regarding her 
long-cherished plan to visit London, and insists 
upon taking a villa at Frascati, so as to be near 
the Denzil children. Then comes a day when Do- 
lores rebels, packs her belongings and goes by her- 
self to Lake Como, to escape the torture of neg- 
lect. Meanwhile Roman gossip has been busy in 
coupling her name with that of another man, that 
of Cesare Carelli. Since he was a mere boy, Carelli 
has been faithful to just one woman, the Mancini. 
But suddenly and quite recently it has become 
common knowledge that he has definitely broken 
with her. Why? asks Rome insistently; Romans 
do not do such things ; a man may be untrue to 
his wife, but a lover remains faithful. There must 
be some other woman — and Rome is quick to find 
her in Dolores. As the Countess Boccara tells 
Dolores to her face, with a malicious little stress 
on the pronoun : " The rupture happened in the 
summer, very soon after you left Rome, cara" 
Now it is while Dolores is in hiding at Como, and 



ROBERT HICHENS 373 

just at the crucial moment when the insistent 
thought has first taken possession of her, " If I 
could only give Theodore a child ! " that Carelli 
tracks her down — and this is the beginning of the 
tragedy that the reader at once foresees is in- 
evitable. What actually follows may be put into 
a dozen words. Dolores does give a child to Sir 
Theodore — a child of alien parentage — but she 
never reaps the harvest that she has hoped for, the 
harvest of reawakened love ; because the child costs 
the mother her life, or rather, not the child, but 
her own loosened hold upon life itself, due to a 
loathing of her own deed. As for Carelli, he is 
truly Italian in his inability to conceive of Do- 
lores's real motive. For love, yes, that he could 
understand ; but for motherhood, never ! And 
when the woman is dead, and the stricken husband 
is just awakening to his loss, the Italian thinks 
to square accounts by claiming his child. But 
his revenge misses fire. His revelation simply re- 
sults in quickening Sir Theodore's own self- 
knowledge, and he says at last in all humility: 
" She was better than I, better than I ! " 

Such is the story of The Fruitful Vine, analyzed 
as generously and as sympathetically as possible. 
It is written with extraordinary power, and it is 
thrown into strong relief against a background of 
rare richness, the vari-colored background of the 
Roman world. Of the inherent bigness of his 



374 ROBERT HICHENS 

theme, the pathos of barrenness, the tragedy of a 
woman who sees her husband's love alienated be- 
cause she fails to give him sons and daughters, 
there can be no question: — just as there can be 
no question that Mr. Hichens has, perhaps unwit- 
tingly, done his utmost to debase it. He has 
given his theme certain perverse twists that put it 
on a level even lower than that of Elinor Glyn's 
much-discussed Three Weeks. It was cheap work- 
manship, and not an unworthy plot, that made 
Three Weeks the ephemeral, negligible book that it 
was. But in The Fruitful Vine we are asked to be- 
lieve that a delicately nurtured, refined and culti- 
vated Englishwoman, who worships her husband, 
is willing to do him the ultimate, crowning wrong 
that any wife can do, and foist upon him, as his 
son and heir, an interloper that has not even the 
redeeming grace of being a child of love, but one 
more basely begotten, more purely meretricious 
than half the nameless waifs that crowd the 
asylums ! And in asking this, he simply insults 
our intelligence. All his finished craftsmanship 
cannot make the volume otherwise than futile. 

To sum him up in a few words, we have in Mr. 
Hichens a story teller of much brilliance who has 
deliberately chosen to prostitute his gifts to the 
gratification of unhealthy tastes. He has pre- 
ferred the sensational notoriety of the passing 
hour to the less flamboyant successes of enduring 



ROBERT HICHENS 375 

worth. He has given us a few books that are 
fairly innocuous and just one book that deserves 
to live. And the danger of according the full 
measure of praise to The Garden of Allah lies in 
this : that by granting its greatness, we may seem 
by implication to put the stamp of approval on 
the author's other works, so many of which, unfor- 
tunately, are mentally and morally unclean. 



"FRANK DANBY" 

The critical comment, both in this country and 
in England, that has greeted the novels which from 
time to time have appeared over the signature of 
" Frank Danbj," has so often been tinged by a 
prejudiced and illiberal spirit that it seems worth 
while before proceeding to a detailed examination 
of her place in fiction, to comment briefly on a 
form of inconsistency that is only too prevalent 
among present-day reviewers. A critic, of course, 
has an inalienable right to choose his own stand- 
ard, provided he makes that standard clear and 
adheres to it ; he is free to pose as a self-appointed 
censor of public morals, or he may champion the 
cause of art for art's sake, denying the right of 
morality to intervene. But he must not follow one 
standard to-day and a diff^erent one to-morrow, or 
he will be as futile as a double-pointed compass. 
Thanks to the modern spread of cosmopolitanism 
in letters, there has been a notable diminution of 
what the author of Pigs in Clover calls the " pru- 
rient purity of the provincial mind " in the Anglo- 
Saxon attitude towards the realism of the Con- 
tinental school. Zola and Maupassant, Suder- 
376 




FRANK DANBY 



« FRANK DANBY " 377 

mann and Strindberg and d'Annunzio are ac- 
cepted very nearly at the valuation of their own 
countrymen. Yet the same critic who has trained 
himself to speak glibly of the admirable technique 
of La Maison Tellier, and the powerful symbolism 
of the Trionfo della Morte, suddenly lapses back 
into the old-time prudery the instant he is con- 
fronted with an attempt in English, no matter how 
well done, to imitate the Continental school. And 
this is palpably unjust. No one is under any 
obligation to feign a liking for Flaubert and the 
Goncourts, Daudet, Huysmans and the various 
other influences under which such a writer as, let 
us say, George Moore, acquired his technique and 
developed his art. But no one has the right to 
profess admiration for Saplio and Nana and La 
Fille Elisa, and condemn The Mummer'^s Wife as 
sordid and unclean. 

Mrs. Julia Frankau, who has chosen to dif- 
ferentiate between her various art monographs and 
her contributions to fiction by publishing the for- 
mer over her own name and signing the latter with 
the pseudonym of " Frank Danby," is emphatically 
one of the writers who in fairness should be judged 
by Continental standards. In spirit and in method, 
the best and biggest of her novels show a breadth 
of canvas, a sweeping, Zolaesque audacity of theme 
and phrase, an uncompromising honesty that 
shock and off*end the conventional Anglo-Saxon 



378 " FRANK DANBY " 

mind. In her ability to handle the unsavory facts 
with an utter absence of self-consciousness, a 
purely detached and scientific interest in her facts, 
akin to that of a surgeon at a clinic, she is to be 
classed, not with the women novelists of England 
or America, but with that small and widely scat- 
tered group of robust and valiant spirits, such as 
Matilde Serao in Italy, Emilia Pardo Bazan in 
Spain, the late Amalie Skram in the Far North, 
Helene Bohlau and Margarete Bohme in Germany, 
— the last named just beginning to gain the recog- 
nition that she so richly deserves. If there is any 
other woman in England whose work gives prom- 
ise of similar virile strength and fearlessness, it is 
the writer who elects to be known to the public 
as " Richard Dehan," whose South African novel, 
The Dop Doctor, in spite of many crudities, was 
full of brilliant promise, and whose new volume, 
Between Two Thieves, is one of the biggest his- 
torical novels of the present decade. 

But while granting freely to " Frank Danby " 
her unflinching courage, her clear-eyed under- 
standing of life, her relentless probing after the 
truth, even though in doing so she opens up the 
fester-spots of society, one must also admit that 
she is a sadly uneven craftsman, often handi- 
capped by her lack of self-criticism, and driven to 
unwise lengths by the violence of her prejudices 
and a goading impatience at narrow-minded mis- 



" FRANK DANBY " 379 

comprehension. Her scathing contempt of certain 
classes and racial types, her unsoftened utterances 
on politics, religion, heredity and the problems of 
sex abundantly account for the unjust neglect and 
condemnation that were so largely the portion of 
her earlier novels. Yet the volumes which show 
most markedly this spirit of revolt, this deter- 
mination to speak the truth, regardless of whom it 
offends, are precisely the volumes that make her 
an interesting figure in contemporary fiction. 
They include, notably, Dr, Phillips, which created 
no small sensation in London, upward of twenty 
years ago. Pigs in Clover, which in spite of a faulty 
structure remains to this day its author's biggest 
novel, and The Sphinxes Lawyer, her most flagrant 
defiance of public opinion, which nevertheless pro- 
pounds certain weighty questions that compel 
thoughtful attention. Since the publication of 
The Sphinxes Lawyer " Frank Danby's " manner 
has undergone a change. Her later volumes. 
The Heart of a Child, An Incompleat Etonian, — 
known in America under the title of Sebastian, 
even Joseph in Jeopardy, which here and there has 
a flash of the old-time daring, show a spirit of con- 
cession. Of these later books, the author might 
have written what she actually did write of her 
biography of Lady Hamilton, that " much has been 
omitted that might offend the susceptibilities of 
those to whom the truth is less grateful than 



380 "FRANK DANBY " 

delicacy." They are carefully written books, 
showing her customary wise understanding of hu- 
man nature, together with a distinct gain in the 
mechanics of construction; and they are books 
which are not likely to call forth hostile comments. 
They may be safely put into the hands of the aver- 
age reader without fear of ruffling too harshly any 
pet prejudice, — unless, perhaps, here and there 
some champion of the suffragette movement may 
resent the wholesome indorsement of the old- 
fashioned domestic type of woman, in Joseph in 
Jeopardy. But they lack that ample largeness of 
view, that forceful singleness of purpose, that ex- 
uberant vitality, which, in the case of her earlier 
books, compelled recognition, even in the face of a 
storm of protests, as novels of serious importance 
and big promise. 

What has happened to " Frank Danby " is not 
unlike what happens to a large proportion of suc- 
cessful novelists ; yet, because of her peculiar gifts, 
it is a little more noticeable and a good deal more 
regrettable. It is only young authors, in the first 
flush of enthusiasm, who dare fully to defy conven- 
tion. With each successive year they find them- 
selves, almost unconsciously perhaps, a little more 
narrowed down, a little more hampered both in 
form and in subject, by what is expected of them, 
by what is demanded by the generation in which 
they live. In France, the conventional limitations 



"FRANK DANBY" 381 

show themselves a little more obviously than in our 
country, thanks to that ultra-conservative institu- 
tion, the French Academy. It is an interesting 
and enlightening study to compare the youthful 
and exuberant independence to be found in the 
earlier work of many a staid academician, with 
the admirably correct but colorless productions 
which only too often follow their election. Of 
course, if an author in the beginning is not vio- 
lently independent or startlingly iconoclastic; if 
his departures either from the prescribed technique 
of fiction or the conventional range of subjects has 
not behind it that spark of genius which provokes 
antagonism, then he may very easily and with no 
great loss to the world settle down to the usual 
beaten path of the English novelist, happy in the 
conviction that he is showing a steady upward 
growth that keeps pace with his gain in popular- 
ity. But now and then one comes across a pe- 
culiarly flagrant and exasperating case of a big, 
erratic, undisciplined genius that, with proper en- 
couragement, might in time achieve great things ; 
but, because of the world's slowness to understand 
and to accept that which is new, especially when 
it runs counter to deep-rooted prejudice, the 
genius finds itself broken to harness, like a clipped- 
winged Pegasus, and compelled to pace along with 
due decorum. 

It would be unfair to Mrs. Frankau to suggest 



382 "FRANK DANBY " 

her as an example of such broken-spirited genius. 
In the face of much discouragement, she has ended 
by conquering her pubhc, without any really 
humiliating sacrifice of her ideals. What has un- 
doubtedly reacted in her favor is a solid reputation 
that she has simultaneously been building up in 
another department of letters, with a series of 
biographies and art monographs whose solid worth 
has from the first been unquestioned. Thus, her 
Eighteenth Century Colored Prints has been for 
ten years the recognized authority on the subject, 
and has given this special branch of the art a new 
valuation ; her Life of James and William Ward 
complements and rounds out the earlier volume, 
and stands as a classic of its kind; while the Lon- 
don Academy, which only a few years ago was 
quite ruthless in its denunciations of her novels, 
does not hesitate to proclaim her biography of 
Lady Hamilton " the ripest and best work of the 
greatest woman writer now living in England." 
And yet it is undoubtedly true that the cumula- 
tion of unintelligent and misdirected criticism has 
had upon " Frank Danby " an effect identical in 
kind with that above suggested, and differing solely 
in the degree of its consequences. Current book 
reviews are proclaiming Joseph in Jeopardy Mrs. 
Frankau's finest effort, just as they previously 
passed a like verdict upon The Heart of a Child 
and An Incompleat Etonian. But to the reader 



" FRANK DANBY " 383 

who happens to have read Pigs in Clover when it 
first appeared and to have been swept off his feet 
by the tremendous truth and unashamed human 
passion of it, these later more controlled, more 
carefully wrought pictures of English life suggest 
that unmistakable bluish pallor which comes from 
too much skimming and too much water. 

Now, just why these later volumes of " Frank 
Danby's " leave an indefinable impression of a low- 
ered vitality, a lack of riotous, red blood, an ab- 
sence of the old-time storm and stress of primitive 
emotions, is at first a little puzzling to explain. 
Her characters are still etched in with the same 
unfaltering, sharply burined lines as of old, the 
individual situations are as poignantly and arrest- 
ingly real, the central themes as profoundly and 
broadly human. The ability of an unprotected 
girl to guard herself from the world, the pros- 
pects of a boy handicapped by unfortunate hered- 
ity, the fidelity of a husband to his marriage vows, 
are one and all subjects of as wide and vital inter- 
est as the injustice of our penal system, the elusive, 
insistent attraction of sex, or the social eligibility 
of the modern Jew. The essential difference, when 
we come to examine these volumes a little closer, 
lies, not in " Frank Danby's " art, but in her 
craftsmanship, in the mechanical framework on 
which she builds. Reviewers insist that she has 
gained in technical skill ; and, in point of symmetry 



384 " FRANK DANBY " 

of structure, an elimination of all superfluous mat- 
ter, an ending that carries with it a certain super- 
ficial logic and satisfies the popular demand for a 
happy solution, she undoubtedly has learned her 
lesson. But in her earlier books she was content to 
carry her theme straight to its foreordained conse- 
quences, whether it left a pleasant taste on the 
mental palate or not, and even though all estab- 
lished rules of structure were shattered in the 
process. Without intending to minimize the impor- 
tance of technique, we may nevertheless point out 
that the more rigid we make its rules, the more 
they partake of the nature of ready-made gar- 
ments, which run in certain stock sizes and fit best 
when tried upon the average commonplace indi- 
vidual, and which fit grotesquely or not at all upon 
the shoulders of a giant. Pigs in Clover, dispro- 
portioned and unsymmetrical though it is, belongs 
nevertheless to the order of giants. It might ad- 
vantageously have been lopped off a few chapters 
sooner ; it simply did not know where to stop grow- 
ing. But no enlightened reader should be seriously 
annoyed by its structural eccentricities ; the thing 
is too big for that. Beginning, however, with The 
Heart of a Child, there is a radical difference. 
We are keenly conscious, underneath the surface 
flesh-and-blood of these later stories, of a manu- 
factured skeleton, which is palpably not bone and 
sinew, and we resent the artificiality of it. Meta- 



" FRANK DANBY " 385 

phoricallj speaking, it is the difference between 
creation and taxidermy. It is usually the closing 
chapter where the internal string and wire pro- 
trude. There is a lack of finality about them, 
an impression that they have dodged the real point 
at issue, have failed to solve the problem pro- 
pounded. " Frank Danby " is not the first novel- 
ist who has found certain knots so intricate that, 
instead of untying them, it seemed simpler to cut 
them with a knife. 

There is yet another reason which strikes closer 
to the root of the difference between " Frank 
Danby's " earlier and later method than any mere 
question of technique. It is her deliberate change 
of attitude towards life. From the first her real 
strength lay in her ability to look unflinchingly 
on the cruelty and injustice of the world at large, 
to picture without compromise the net results of 
human frailty and selfishness and sin. In all her 
books, she chose instinctively characters and sit- 
uations that made for tragedy, — and she does so 
still. Life's handicaps, the snares that heredity 
and environment so abundantly provide, enter into 
the very warp of her plots, the later and earlier 
alike. Yet, while the nature of her material has 
not changed, she has begun to cultivate a vein of 
optimism, to refuse to credit the evidence of her 
own experience, to insist upon hoping against logic 
for a happy outcome. Formerly, she had the air 



386 "FRANK DANBY " 

of saying, authoritatively, " Here is a situation 
which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is 
bound to end in disaster." In her later books, 
she says, on the contrary, " Here is the hundredth 
case, the great exception," — and, in spite of all 
her native talent and her acquired art, she does 
not quite succeed in carrying conviction. 

There are some authors whose successive vol- 
umes seem to fit together with the same nicety 
as the carefully chiseled stones in the span 
of an arch, so that if a single volume were omitted 
from mention, the whole structure of a critical 
article would be in danger of toppling down. 
" Frank Danby " is not one of these. No chron- 
ological study of her works would help to explain 
why some of them loom up so large and others are 
so easily negligible. Accordingly, it seems more 
profitable to pass over her ineffectual volumes 
with little or no mention, — ^her almost forgotten 
Copper Crash and A Babe in Bohemia, the faulty 
workmanship of Baccarat, the futile unpleasant- 
ness of Let the Roof Fall In, — and dwell mainly 
upon the high lights, the few vitally significant 
volumes. 

And, unquestionably, if " Frank Danby's " 
claim to a prominent place among contemporary 
story tellers is to be vindicated, the one book to 
single out for detailed analysis is Pigs in Clover, 



" FRANK DANBY " 387 

It is not the first story in which she vivisected the 
baffling and mysterious attraction of sex and at the 
same time analyzed the English Jew with a merci- 
less frankness verging upon malice. Both these 
elements also underlie the story of Dr. Phillips, in 
which a man of high attainment, erudite, wealthy 
and widely honored, falls a victim to the compel- 
ling lure of sex, and for the sake of a shallow, 
selfish, mercenary little woman, who does not even 
love him, sacrifices himself utterly, stoops to the 
basest of dishonor and uses the cloak of his pro- 
fession to commit a cowardly murder. There are 
few scenes in modern fiction more remorselessly 
cruel than that in which Dr. Phillips, obses&ed with 
his infatuation for another woman, stands by the 
bedside of his faithful, middle-aged, unlovely wife, 
who has just undergone a serious operation, and 
is now sleeping the unnatural sleep induced by the 
lingering effects of the anesthetic supplemented by 
a hypodermic injection of morphine. The chance 
is so opportune, the danger of detection so slight ; 
the dose given by the other doctor might have 
been too strong for her weakened vitality; a sec- 
ond dose, inserted in the same puncture, leaves no 
trace, and the poor, faithful old wife breathes 
slowly and painlessly into oblivion. 

Dr. Phillips, however, in spite of its unsparing 
satire of certain Jewish types, is really little more 



388 "FRANK DANBY " 

than the story of a specific and peculiarly cruel 
crime. Pigs in Clover is a book of altogether dif- 
ferent magnitude. It is obvious that one of the 
main arguments of the story, the one in which she 
herself seems to be most keenly interested, is a 
broad racial problem, the eligibility of the modern 
Jew to be received on a footing of social equality. 
At least, she proclaims this purpose in her title, 
suggesting, as it does, the pushing droves of un- 
savory and unwelcome intruders, eager for a feast 
upon the forbidden social clover. Incidentally, 
she theorizes a good deal about the modern Jew. 
As a matter of fact, her story contains just two 
types, the full-blooded Hebrew, self-made mil- 
lionaire, proud of his success, conscious of his 
social shortcomings and good-naturedly amused 
at the pointed snubs that he receives ; and the 
mongrel type, the " veneered cad in a golden 
frame," who almost passes for a gentleman, who 
betrays his origin to the casual stranger only by 
the slight burr of his " r," and who keeps the 
full extent of his social and moral obliquity con- 
cealed from those nearest and dearest to him, al- 
most until the end. The way in which we are first 
introduced to Karl Althaus, South-African mil- 
lionaire, and his adopted brother, Louis, in the 
full noontide of their prosperity, and then are per- 
mitted to catch just one fleeting glimpse of their 
origin, is a stroke of genius. It is as though a cur- 



" FRANK DANBY " 389 

tain were drawn aside for an instant from some 
grim, ghastly, lurid picture, and then were allowed 
to fall back into place, almost before the spectator 
realizes the significance of what he has seen. One 
remembers only the squalid chamber in the 
wretched kosher provision shop in Houndsditch; 
the fat, repulsive Jewess with a greasy black fringe 
above her forehead, lying paralyzed and helpless 
on her bed, dead already save for the haunting 
pathos of her questioning eyes ; the miserable Pol- 
ish Jew, her husband, not satisfied with having 
drained her like a human leech, of her last penny 
and her last ounce of strength, but heaping upon 
her the ultimate insult of bringing in another 
woman, a girl from the London streets, to share 
their poverty and degradation. And finally, that 
crowning, indescribable scene with its haunting at- 
mosphere of death : a dying Jewess, a dying Eng- 
lish girl, a new-born child, and Karl Althaus, a 
lad of twelve, swearing to be a brother and a pro- 
tector to that child throughout its life. And in 
this fugitive glimpse of their origin we get the 
secret of the life-long difference between these two. 
Karl, coarse, vulgar, unscrupulous, nevertheless 
has his own definite moral standard. Even as a 
boy, he might steal, but never beg; he might lie, 
but never break his promise. Louis is first, last 
and always a cad; and the chief distinguishing 
feature of a cad is, not that he has a lower stand- 



390 " FRANK DANBY " 

ard than other men, but that in certain directions 
he has no moral standard at all. 

There is a good deal of matter in Pigs in Clover 
which strikes the average reader as mere surplus- 
age, — questions of racial antagonism, imperialism 
in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes and his Cape-to- 
Cairo schemes. The vital interest of the book is 
centered in the life history of just one man and 
one woman; in other words, it is a psychological 
problem, — and theoretically, the psychological 
writer who contents himself with a smaller canvas 
will do a proportionately stronger piece of work. 
The realist, the man who intentionally touches 
upon the material surface of things, may make his 
picture as broad as he pleases, may crowd it with 
figures from all paths of life, may present humanity 
in battalions and in regiments. But the author 
whose special province is to probe down into the 
mysteries of the human heart, and the interest of 
whose picture centers in the dingy back parlor of a 
London lodging-house, gains nothing, it would 
seem, from sketching a map of the entire British 
Empire over the margins of his canvas. And yet 
one hesitates to dogmatize upon a point like this. 
As already said, the book is rugged, unsym- 
metrical, almost crude ; and yet, without that back- 
ground of intrigue, and imperialism and national 
unrest, the destinies of the two or three central 
figures might not have loomed up so big and so 



" FRANK DANBY " 391 

momentous. It is as if we saw them isolated on a 
height, silhouetted against the blackness of a 
storm-cloud. 

Be this as it may, the essential details of the 
story are as follows: In all South Africa, there 
is no richer vein of ore than that known as the 
" Geldenrief," and in it centers Karl Althaus's 
scheme for a colossal fortune. But the richest 
part of the vein dips down under the farm of one 
Piet de Groot, a pig-headed old Boer, who cares 
nothing for gold mines and will not sell. This 
farm is his home, also his family burial lot ; his 
father and grandfather lie beneath its sod, and no 
Englishman shall own a foot of it. But Piet is old 
and ill. His wife, Joan, is a 3^oung Englishwoman, 
with a clear, vivid brain, and an essentially fem- 
inine temperament. She lives estranged from him, 
but sooner or later she will inherit the farm. All 
these facts are well known to Karl. Furthermore, 
he knows that a crisis is imminent, that any day a 
political bombshell, like the Jameson Raid, may 
bring the Transvaal, and the " Geldenrief " with 
it, under English control. Meanwhile, there are 
two things which an unscrupulous man might do. 
If he were a man possessed of that rare and in- 
definable compelling power, he might exert it to 
reduce Piet de Groot's English wife to a willing 
submission. If, like Karl, he happened to have in 
England a powerful friend, such as Lord Heyward, 



392 "FRANK DANBY " 

— and especially if he was in possession of a 
shameful secret about Lord Heyward's daughter, — • 
he might, through Parliament, exert a subtle in- 
fluence upon England's foreign policy. Karl Alt- 
haus, being neither a blackmailer nor a seducer 
of women, misses both opportunities. His half- 
brother, Louis, being an adept in these arts, misses 
neither. 

Many other novelists, both before and since 
Pigs in Clover^ have written of the mysterious at- 
traction of sex, that indefinable spell which a par- 
ticular man may exert over a particular woman. 
The idea, however, has been elaborated and anal- 
yzed by " Frank Danby " in a way that seems to 
leave nothing further to be added : 

There is a mystery known to all who know men 
and women, to all who have insight into, sympathy 
with, or understanding of their fellow travelers, but 
it is blank and incomprehensible to the Pharisees, 
and to all who read and run at the same time. This 
is the mystery that fills the divorce courts, mocks the 
incredulous and sets at naught all creeds and condi- 
tions. It is a certain something, subtle, sweet and rare, 
not a perfume, not a touch, but an echo of both, light, 
elusive and pervading, that is the special property of 
some loose-living men, a property that is beyond the 
reach of analysis, but recognizable in the free-masonry 
of the passions by all who have realized its existence. 
It is as the candle to the moth, as the rose to the but- 



^^ FRANK DANBY" 393 

terfly, as the magnet to the steel. It is the surface lure 
of sex, it is the all-compelling whisper, almost it seems 
that to hear it is to obey. But some cars are deaf 
to it, some few dull ears. 

This is the paragraph that serves as an intro- 
duction to the chapters detailing the conquest of 
Joan de Groot by Louis Althaus, — chapters won- 
derful in their discernment and merciless frank- 
ness, chapters which probably portray more 
nearly than any other contemporary novel the 
English equivalent of a Bel-Ami. To Louis, 
Joan's attraction was largely, but not whollj^, a 
matter of self-interest. It was not merely that 
she was a means to an end, a stepping-stone to 
the possession of the " Geldenrief," thereby en- 
abling him to steal a march upon his brother, Karl. 
He had not been ten minutes in her presence before 
he realized that " her bright, elusive womanhood 
was shy and wild, and he wanted it, as men always 
want to bring down wild things." And as for 
Joan, in spite of her clear, level little brain, the 
virile brain that had made her a personage of some 
consequence in South Africa, and had produced one 
much discussed novel, called The Kaffir a7id His 
Keeper, — she knew within those same ten minutes, 
" that she was lonely, and that love, the love of 
which she read and of which she wrote, had been 
nothing but a pulseless world, colder than print. 



394 " FRANK DANBY " 

Her loneliness shuddered through her and then was 
gone, and the low voice with its burred ' r's ' filled 
its place." 

The elaboration of this drama is a bit of rare 
narrative art. The history of Louis's conquest, 
the deliberate, remorseless effort to bring down a 
" wild thing," is narrated with a probing insist- 
ence, a consummate knowledge, in which not a word 
rings false. " He blotted out thought and gave 
her sensation in its stead ; she vibrated at his touch 
as violin strings at the hand of a musician," and 
again, "Always he met her moods half-way. If 
she did not care for him in every way, if she was 
not as sure as he was, that life meant nothing for 
either of them apart, then she was right. He 
would not take her in a mood. She must come to 
him because she wanted him as he wanted her. He 
was an artist in his role." The best test of the 
convincing truth of this picture is that it makes 
one foresee so clearly just what the inevitable out- 
come will be. A " dream voyage " to England, a 
l)rief month or two of paradise in a cottage near 
Bushey, and then the true character of Louis 
gradually betrays itself, the smallness of his moral 
stature, his abysmal selfishness. Joan remains the 
woman of moods that she has always been, and he 
wearies of meeting these moods half-way. She is 
a woman who will delay dinner for half an hour in 
order to gaze at a sunset, oblivious of his im- 



"FRANK DANBY" 395 

patience and his hunger. She lacks the tact to 
guard against the inevitable steak coming on 
burned, cold and utterly unpalatable. Manlike, 
Louis ceases to come to Bushey, even on Sunday. 

Instead Joan went to him in London. She had to 
meet him in unfrequented eating-houses^ at small 
hotels, where in private rooms, stiff with obtrusive 
velvet furniture, horrible with long pauses between 
the courses, with the leering waiter knocking ostenta- 
tiously before he entered, the glamour of love began to 
fall before her blue eyes, and the reality of it to lurk 
hideously in the back of her drugged mind. 

Then comes the memorable scene, on the night 
when the two come together, each in possession of a 
momentous secret, she with the knowledge of a 
strange and wonderful prospect that for the first 
time seems to justify her prayers that Piet de 
Groot may die, — and, woman-like, she fancies that 
Louis will understand and share her joy. The 
secret that Louis carries with him is the news that 
Piet de Groot is already dead, — but it is news 
which he has no intention of sharing with Joan, at 
least not yet, not until he has secured her signa- 
ture to a full and absolute release of her interest 
in the " Geldenrief." But in thinking that he can 
obtain this, he shows how little be understands 
Joan's character. Temperamentally, she may be 
frail, but in money dealings she is scrupulously 
honest. She has wronged her husband enough al- 



396 " FRANK DANBY " 

ready ; never through act of hers shall his wishes 
in regard to the property be disregarded. So, in 
spite of her bitter dread of the inevitable " scene," 
she has the strength to deny him, to argue with 
him, to hold him off. As fate wills it, within an 
hour after he has left her, planning to renew the 
attack, she learns the truth ; that her husband is 
dead, that Louis knows it, that he has not and 
never has had any idea of marrying her ; in short, 
that his interest in her, first, last and always, has 
centered in the " Geldenrief ." She knows her own 
pitiful weakness, she foresees that if not to-day, 
then to-morrow or the day after, at a pleading 
word from him, at the beloved sound of those 
softly burred " r's," she will sign the paper as he 
asks. So she burns her ships behind her. She 
seeks a lawyer, executes a paper relinquishing all 
rights in her dead husband's property, posts it to 
South Africa, and disappears into the obscurity 
of the East End of London. 

It is here, some months later, that Karl Alt- 
haus finds her, destitute, a pitiful wreck of her 
former self, with too frail a grip on life even to 
mourn the child that was born dead. It is from 
her lips that Karl learns of the share that Louis 
has had in her misery. 

" I left him. He didn't leave me, he didn't desert 
me, don't think it, Karl. He v/as disappointed in 



"FRANK DANBY" 397 

me. I didn't want to be a drag on him. I knew he 
was dependent upon you. I knew he wasn't rich " 

" What! " he shouted, screamed it almost. No one 
had ever seen Karl like this before. He had risen 
from his seat, his face was purple; but still he saw 
her, terrified, white. 

" Go on ! Go on ! He wasn't rich " 

"Karl!" 

" I'm beside myself. Don't mind me, — he wasn't 
rich, you say. For God's sake, go on! Oh, my God, 
don't tell me he left you without money! Oh, my 
God, the thing I've reared ! " 

Karl marries her. That is to say, he gives her 
the shelter of his name, demanding nothing, ac- 
cepting nothing beyond the privilege of reinstating 
her in the world's esteem and her own self-respect. 
Yet his very generosity, his unvarying considera- 
tion, his careful attempt at concealment of his 
own feelings, make her life a daily punishment. 
" Karl's eyes, which seemed to her pleading eyes, 
Karl's wishes, when she thought she read them, 
Karl's hand on her shoulder, all outraged her ; for 
in her life there was, there could be, but one man." 
There is the keynote: she is the type of woman in 
whose life there could be but one man. The author 
might have written 'finis after that word, instead of 
forcing us to follow the story to the bitterness of 
its inevitable end. The world is never smaller than 
when it contains two people who by all the laws of 



398 " FRANK DANBY " 

justice and honor ought never to meet again. It 
is a foregone conclusion that sooner or later Joan 
and Louis will meet, and that when they do, he 
will try to lure her back to him, if only to gratify 
a contemptible vanity in his own power of pleas- 
ing. And if Joan once hears the soft tones of his 
voice, with that unforgettable foreign burr, she 
will have no power to deny. But once already 
Joan has had the strength of weakness, she has 
burned her bridges. That time Avhat Louis cov- 
eted was money, and she placed it beyond his de- 
sire and her weakness by relinquishing her own 
hold upon it. This time it is something more 
precious, it is life itself that she must relinquish, 
in order to thwart him ; and so the curtain falls 
as the last flicker of sensation in Joan's dying 
brain translates the futile knocking at her locked 
door into the hammer-strokes driving home the 
nails into her coffin. 

It is a pity that the subject-matter in The 
SphinXy artistically the second in importance 
among " Frank Danby's " novels, makes it inex- 
pedient to analyze it at similar length. Frankly, 
its theme is The Ballad of Reading Gaol, played 
with variations. As an experiment in construc- 
tion, it has an almost unique interest. Very sel- 
dom has a novelist ventured to take for the central 
figure a dead man, — no, not even a dead man, but 
the mere wraith of a man's memory, the imaginary 



" FRANK DANBY " 399 

ideal wliich the man's own actions shattered before 
his death. There is undeniably something in- 
finitely pathetic in the figure of a beautiful and 
much-courted woman, stricken down by some ob- 
scure spinal trouble, at the very hour of her hus- 
band's need, and doomed to linger on through years 
of helpless martyrdom, branded and pilloried by 
the infamy of the name she bears : 

Sybil Heseltine, whom her friends called the 
Sphinx, was a hedonist, with level brows and a dead- 
white skin, who wore Egyptian designs on her Greek 
tea-gowns and talked of superabundant health and 
vigor while she lay perpetually on her sofa, propped 
up by silken cushions, vital only in her wonderful 
eyes. 

There is something almost uncanny in the spell 
which the author has succeeded in casting around 
this woman, whose part is so strange and dark a 
riddle, and who is striving so pitifully to hold to- 
gether a little coterie of the faithful, and to pre- 
serve a halo around the memory of the man who 
has dragged her in the mire. But the fact re- 
mains that, from first to last, the atmosphere of 
the book is pathological. To discuss it frankly 
and fully would be possible only to the pages of a 
law report or a medical journal. Consequently, 
in spite of the book's undeniable power, its sin- 
cerity, its pervading quality of mercy, one feels 



400 "FRANK DANBY " 

that it belongs to the order of books which were 
better not to have been written at all. 

Baccarat may be dismissed even more smn- 
marily. It may be compared to that mongrel 
product of modern architectural economy, the 
two-family house. Originally the first half of it 
was detached and rented out separately, as a 
magazine novelette ; and the second half of it 
might conceivably have likewise been offered for 
separate consumption. The theme of the first half 
was a blind instinct for gambling which, like a 
craving for a deadly drug, sometimes seizes upon 
a man or a woman, blunts their faculties, drags 
them down from one ignominy to another. The 
second half has no further structural connection 
with the first than merely that it is the working 
out of one particular problem resulting from one 
particular infamy into which a woman has been 
dragged by her gambling passion. She might 
have stooped in the same manner from any one of 
a dozen other motives. Gambling, in the second 
half, ceases to be of structural importance. The 
point of view has shifted from the wife to the hus- 
band ; the central theme is no longer the wife's 
frailty, but the husband's strength, — his ability 
to face the problem of granting pardon to in- 
fidelity, the problem so boldly and truthfully 
worked out in a score of Continental novels, from 
Margueritte's Le Pardon to d'Annunzio's Vlnno- 



"FRANK DANBY" 401 

cente. Because this theme has been supremely 
handled by other writers, and also, one suspects, 
because " Frank Danby " herself was conscious of 
having made a false start and was committed to a 
solution that lacks the ring of truth, the book 
suffers sadly by way of contrast. It stands as a 
frail, abortive attempt, interesting chiefly as a 
conspicuous instance of a gifted author's lack of 
self-criticism. 

This brings us down to the works in " Frank 
Danby's " new manner, beginning with The Heart 
of a Child. The central theme of this book is the 
vexed question whether a young girl born in the 
slums, bred in the gutter, flung at the most critical 
years of her life into the noisome atmosphere of 
cheap dancing halls, may from an inborn instinct 
succeed in protecting herself and maintaining her 
own and the world's respect. That is a theme 
which one would gladly have seen developed with 
the boldness of the earlier " Frank Danby," the 
" Frank Danby " of a decade ago. The volume 
that she has actually written is handicapped by 
its neat and careful structure, its preordained 
plan of ending with a triumphant social rise and a 
marriage to a peer of the realm. It is true that 
she has handicapped herself by making her spe- 
cific case a peculiarly difficult one; that she has 
taken her future Gaiety Girl, Sally Snape, from 
the most dilapidated and depraved rookery to be 



40S "FRANK DANBY" 

found in the London slums ; that she shows her to 
us as being pecuHarly friendless and unguarded, 
and almost incredibly unaware of the dangers that 
beset her; that she brings her repeatedly in con- 
tact with the sort of people most likely to do her 
harm, and in every way seems to have tried de- 
liberately to make the conditions so extreme as to 
force us to say, " If there is an avenue of escape 
for Sally Snape, then no young woman's case is 
hopeless." Now, considered as a specific story 
of a single human life, The Heart of a Child is an 
uncommon piece of sheer narrative dexterity; it 
convinces us, against our better judgment, that 
the girl escapes unscathed, and not merely escapes, 
but each time achieves an advantage from the very 
circumstances that wrought her danger. Not un- 
til her marriage with young Lord Kidderminster, 
does a doubt insinuate itself that the career of 
Sally Snape was not likely to have been quite so 
unspotted as " Frank Danby " has so engross- 
ingly depicted it. But if we regard it, not as a 
specific story, but as the solution of a general 
thesis, her answer must be epitomized somewhat 
after this fashion: that a young woman who goes 
upon the stage, unless surrounded by special safe- 
guards of money and influence, finds herself beset 
by such a host of insidious dangers that she simply 
has not a ghost of a chance, unless a series of 
small miracles are wrought for her exclusive bene- 



"FRANK DANBY" 403 

fit. This is probably not at all the impression 
that Mrs. Frankau wished to convey ; yet she had 
no right to expect any other result from her per- 
sistent use of that most tricky and least justifiable 
device known to novelists, the Intervention of 
Fate. And, of course, by doing so, instead of 
solving her problem, she simply begs the question. 
It is all very well, we tell ourselves, for the Sally 
Snapes of real life to have the safeguard of un- 
awakened desires, the innocent heart of a child, 
the instinctive aversion of being touched, — it will 
all count for nothing, unless fate is kind enough 
to intercede for her over and over again, as it does 
in the case of this particular Sally Snape. 
" Frank Danby " starts her in life with prac- 
tically no chance, until fate removes her patient 
drudge of a mother, her drunken brute of a father. 
She might then have been driven onto the streets, 
had not two immature boys out of pure good com- 
radeship offered to share their room with her. 
And when in the course of months this innocent 
propinquity becomes ill-advised, fate again inter- 
venes by ejecting them from a tenement which the 
city has condemned. And in the same way, all 
through her upward course, from helper in a jam 
factory to cloak model in Madame Violette's West 
End establishment, frcm cloak model to Gaiety 
Girl, she is saved — not by her inborn distaste for 
men's society and men's ways, her ignorance of 



404* "FRANK DANBY " 

what their attentions mean, but by wholly ex- 
traneous circumstances ; the wrecking of Charlie 
Peastone's dogcart, the illness of Joe Aaron's wife, 
the hundred and one events, large or small, that 
cause a different ending to the day from that 
which the men had planned. Yet in simple jus- 
tice to the author, it should be added that while 
reading The Heart of a Child, we forget for the 
time being that there are such things as theses 
and technique and the law of probabilities. We 
think of it simply as the life-story of one frail 
young woman, drifting as helplessly as a cork 
along the conflicting currents of London life ; we 
are caught, just as the various characters in the 
story are caught, with the magic of her personal- 
ity, the intangible, elusive quality that refuses to 
be analyzed, but that Mrs. Frankau has neverthe- 
less seized and flung before us in her pages with 
such poignancy and power that we feel we are 
being allowed to probe a girl's inmost soul. Al- 
though it is infected with the taint of romanticism 
and is separated by an incalculable distance from 
the rugged sincerity of Figs in Clover, it must be 
admitted that The Heart of a Child contains some 
character study that ranks with the best of its 
author's earlier period. 

Sebastian, although structurally a better book 
than The Heart of a Child, has analogous faults, 
and a like failure to carry her theme to its logical 



" FRANK DANBY " 405 

and tragic conclusion. The inferiority of the half- 
breed is one of the admitted commonplaces of 
biology. The fact that a human mongrel usually 
possesses all the vices and few of the virtues of 
the two parent races has formed the basis of many 
a tragedy, both in fact and in fiction. This is a 
problem which, as we have already seen, has oc- 
cupied " Frank Danby " in at least one of her 
books. In Pigs in Clover the plot hinges mainly 
upon the mental and moral gulf between a fine, 
large-hearted Hebrew gentleman, full of high 
aspirations and pride of race, and a currish, 
cowardly mongrel, who has added to the worst 
qualities of his father's people the additional 
viciousness acquired from his mother, a girl of the 
streets. But in Sebastian, Mrs. Frankau has 
studied a problem which, while analogous to this, 
is really quite new in fiction, namely, the problem 
whether the offspring of two people who, although 
of the same blood, are mentally so out of sym- 
pathy as to be of practically a different race, will 
not, like the physical half-breed, inherit the weak- 
nesses of both parents and the strength of neither. 
Sebastian is precisely such a mental and moral 
half-breed. 

Sebastian's father is a London merchant, the 
head of a proud old firm of paper manufacturers. 
Although he has married into a social stratum 
much above him, and understands quite well his 



406 " FRANK DANBY " 

wife's contempt for a mere money-maker like 
himself, he remains to the last as proud of his 
business on the one hand as he is, on the other, of 
his wife and son. The wife, sprung from a long 
line of literary and artistic folk, considers herself 
splendidly tolerant of her husband's inferiority. 
She is quite content to accept the money he lav- 
ishes upon her, but can give him scarcely any of 
her time because she herself is an author whose 
novels have attained quite a succes d'estime. Inci- 
cidentally, they bring her in a not inconsiderable 
revenue, which characteristically she immediately 
converts from the vulgar form of money into the 
nobler but quite useless shape of rare bric-a-brac. 
The fact that her husband is rapidly killing him- 
self by overwork and that she might have light- 
ened his burden is a detail which never pierces 
through the self-absorption of her artistic tem- 
perament. Sebastian, the product of this ill- 
assorted union, is from early childhood admittedly 
his mother's child, the heir to her hereditary gifts. 
It never occurs to his father, save as a foolish and 
unattainable longing, that he might follow in the 
footsteps of trade and carry on the firm name 
which otherwise must perish. It is an understood 
thing that Sebastian is to be a literary genius, 
that he is to go through Eton and Cambridge, 
and whatever further training is needed, regard- 
less of time or cost. But somehow matters do not 



" FRANK DANBY " 407 

work out quite in the prescribed way. In school, 
his masters recognize him as a precocious genius 
— only they discover more precosity than genius. 
His verse is good, but not quite good enough ; and 
somehow the prizes always just escape him. To 
the real artistic temperament, such as that of his 
mother, the consciousness of good work, sincerely 
done, would have been reward enough. Sebastian, 
however, must have the acclaim of public recogni- 
tion, the substantial reward of a money prize. 
The business instinct inherited from the father 
demands an equivalent for value received. This is 
why, to his mother's distress, he turns his back on 
Eton and Cambridge. 

But another motive, born of the shrewd observa- 
tion that is not a heritage from his mother, leads 
him definitely to abandon literature and go into 
business, the paper business of his father and his 
uncles — and this impulse is simply and solely the 
discovery that his father is a desperately sick man, 
who may at any day or hour be stricken with 
death. Curiously enough, he discovers that while 
he had always loved languages and hated mathe- 
matics, the rudiments of business and the mere 
mechanical task of casting up columns come to him 
with amazing facility. He also has the inborn gift 
of affability and persuasiveness ; boy though he 
is, the business grows under his aid and guidance 
with remarkable strides. And so, when in a few 



408 " FRANK DANBY " 

brief years the father does suddenly die, and Se- 
bastian acquires full control, he launches forth 
upon a scale that amazes his competitors, frightens 
some of them, and secretly amuses others who fore- 
see the inevitable end. For, of course, Sebastian 
as a business man is no more sterling coin than 
he was as a man of letters. His material demand 
for payment spoiled him as a poet, his visionary 
temperament spoils him for a merchant. In short, 
he is an intellectual half-breed, with all the weak- 
nesses of the business man and the man of letters, 
and with the saving qualities of neither. Had Mrs. 
Frankau been quite honest in her treatment of this 
problem it must have ended in failure — the blotting 
out of the unfit. But her careful and circumscribed 
little scaffolding demanded a happy ending, and 
she must build accordingly. So she brings to the 
rescue a very rich and very generous man who 
happens to love Sebastian's widowed mother, and 
for her sake is willing to sink a few millions in 
Sebastian's crippled business — with the intention, 
however, of keeping a strong guiding hand on the 
lad's future movements. Here, as in The Heart 
of a Child, Mrs. Frankau has begged the issue; 
but one does not seriously mind it because the real 
solution is sufficiently obvious. 

This brings us down to " Frank Danby's " latest 
volume, with the self-explanatory title, Joseph in 
Jeopardy, Now, partly because of the title, partly 



"FRANK DANBY" 409 

also because this modern Joseph and his still more 
modern Delilah loom up rather large in the book, 
it is quite natural for the average reader to make 
the mistake of regarding their relationship and 
its outcome as the crucial interest of the volume, 
and be disappointed in the ending which, from 
the point of view of the lady in question, is un- 
deniably an anti-climax. But it happens that to 
" Frank Danby " the interest centers in a third 
character, namely, Joseph's wife. In this dis- 
quieting and subversive era of the suffragette, it 
is pleasant to find that " Frank Danby " retains 
a sane and wholesome belief in the old-fashioned 
domestic virtues and the courage to make a timid, 
unattractive little woman win a difficult victory 
solely by force of them. But the book well de- 
serves to be examined somewhat more in detail. 
It opens with the ostentatious marriage of Den- 
nis Passiful, the new owner of Abinger's famous 
art gallery in Bond Street, to Mabel, only daugh- 
ter of Amos Juxton, millionaire founder of " Jux- 
ton's Limited," which, with its battle-cries of 
" Emancipation for Women at Last," and 
" Pure Food served hot and hot," contracts for a 
small annual subscription to serve three substan- 
tial meals a day, delivered to the home. Dennis 
was left an orphan in early childhood and edu- 
cated, — although this he does not know until later, 
— on a fund raised by voluntary contributions. 



410 " FRANK DANBY " 

Among the contributors, the three who gave most 
generously were the good Vicar who adopted him, 
old Abe Abinger, expert art dealer, whose art 
gallery he inherited, and Juxton, whose house was 
a second home, and whose daughter, Mabel, a 
kindly fate seemed to have destined for his wife. 
As a matter of fact, Dennis married her, not for 
love, but out of pity, and with never one thought 
of the Juxton millions. He had supposed that 
Mabel was in love with Roddy Ainsworth; but 
when Roddy went off to the colonies with a musical 
comedy company, and Dennis found Mabel in 
tears, he helped to dry her eyes, and promptly 
stepped into the breach, reminding her that there 
was " another fellow besides Roddy." To the 
casual beholder, Mabel seemed scarcely the fitting 
mate for such a fine specimen of English manhood 
as Dennis. " Even in her wedding dress, and 
through the filmy lace that softened and en- 
shrouded her, one could see that she was lean, and 
her back a little rounded; that her face and hair 
matched in a dead level of dun; that she had 
neither style, presence, nor beauty ; that she looked 
every day of her six-and-twenty years, and had 
no grace nor compensating charm." Furthermore, 
she had no conversation, beyond a fund of incon- 
sequential details about household affairs, the 
servants, the marketing, the weekly wash : 



" FRANK DANBY " 411 

" Dennis, do you remember if you have had five 
clean shirts since Saturday? I've counted them over 
three times, but I can't make them any less. And 
did I tell you those new socks of yours are going into 
holes so fast? I wish I could get better darning 
thread here, but the shops are really very poor. 
They've torn quite a hole out of one of your pyjamas 
at the laundry. I believe it's a steam laundry, al- 
though they assured me it was all done by hand." 

In fact, it is not surprising that Dennis should 
have soon come to feel that " his whole life was 
permeated with soiled linen," to take his wife more 
and more for granted and see less and less of her; 
so that, by the end of five years, while there had 
been no outward break, they were practically liv- 
ing separate lives. It was during the fifth year 
that he first beheld Lady Diana Wayne. It was 
at a theater and ^' his eyes, before they had time 
to reach the stage, were arrested by the most per- 
fect back he had ever seen ; he did not know a 
living woman's back could be so beautiful." 

The back and arm absorbed him during the first 
act. It was only toward the end of it that he was 
seized by an overmastering desire to see the face that 
surmounted this wonderful torso. He gratified this 
desire by going to the end of the stalls in the interval 
during the first and second act. The dark hair, 
parted in the middle, waved loosely into that roll of 
hair that left the back part of her neck visible. 



41S "FRANK DANBY" 

The profile, the short nose^ the square chin, were pure 
Greek. She turned to speak to the man by her side. 
The movement of the slender neck was like music. 
Dennis could see the penciled brows under her dark 
hair and the iridescent green of her eyes. 

On the part of Lady Diana, as well as Dennis, 
it was a case of love at first sight. But with him, 
although he was slow to realize it, it was a strong 
man's violent passion for the first and only really 
beautiful woman he had ever taken in his arms. 
To epitomize the history of their playing with fire, 
the subtlety of Lady Diana's temptations, the in- 
nate decency that saves Dennis from himself, 
would be to no purpose. It is all done with ad- 
mirable art and subtle understanding of men and 
women. But just a few further details must be 
given, in order to make the end intelligible. Mabel 
has a brother, Ted, whose wife, Fanny, is a ven- 
omous, unprincipled little wretch, whose heartless- 
ness is the chief factor in causing her husband's 
early death. Incidentally, it should be said that 
the chapters recording Ted Juxton's last illness 
stand out as some of the best work "Frank 
Danby " ever did. Now Fanny, among her other 
misdeeds, is carrying on an intrigue with Cosmo 
Merritt, the brother of Lady Diana. There is no 
good reason why Fanny should wish to hurt Mabel, 
but she is the type of woman who cannot bear the 
thought that another woman is better than her- 



"FRANK DANBY" 413 

self; so she tells Cosmo that Roddy Ainsworth, 
who is back in England and has seen a good deal 
of the Passifuls, is Mabel's lover. Lady Diana, 
seizing eagerly upon this news, makes her big 
blunder; she tells Dennis what she has heard 
about his wife, urges him to seek a divorce, and 
suggests that, even if the scandal is groundless, it 
is still possible to doctor up the evidence so as 
to win; she is sure there is enough to convince a 
jury! 

There was a flush upon his forehead^ and every 
thought of Diana and her loveliness left his mind. 
Mabel — that Mabel's name should be used in this 
way^ her reputation threatened ! The heat in his 
blood was different now and more generous. He was 
overwhelmed with sudden anger or shame. That he 
should have to defend his wife to Diana ! . . . " You 
must understand how impossible this story is about 
my wife; I must make you understand. My wife!'' 
he said the words again and was conscious of the 
tenderness in his heart: " My wife is the most loyal, 
gentle, faithful . , ." He could not go on. 

From this hour. Lady Diana's hold upon this 
modern Joseph is at an end. It remains only to 
indicate that there is one other scene, far too inti- 
mate to be clumsily retold, but infinitely pathetic 
and strangely wise, in which Mabel, all uncon- 
scious of the powers that have warred against her 



414 "FRANK DANBY " 

happiness, in her utter unselfishness does the act 
and speaks the words that inexpressibly touch her 
husband and eventually bring her to her woman's 
kingdom, " the kingdom which Juxton's Limited 
and the Woman's Suffrage League are trying so 
hard and so successfully to demolish." 

Yet, in spite of much fine artistry and wise un- 
derstanding of human nature, which makes it diffi- 
cult to discuss this latest story by " Frank 
Danby " otherwise than indulgently, it is obvious 
that its value is impaired by a pervading strain 
of sentimentalism. On sober second thought, we 
are no more convinced of Dennis's fidelity than we 
previously were of Sally Snape's innocence and 
Sebastian's rehabilitation as a man of business. 
Mrs. Frankau still remains an artist of the first 
rank ; she has mellowed with years and, because 
of her broader charity, her greater faith in human 
nature, she in a measure disarms criticism. Yet 
in the course of the evolution she has undergone, 
she has sacrificed rather more than she has gained. 
She no longer offends fastidious, sensitive souls 
with sordid, unclean environments, shameless and 
vicious lives. But in painting men and women, 
not as they are, but as she likes to believe that 
they might be, she has lost that sterling mark 
which makes Pigs in Clover, with all its faults, a 
work of genius, — the mark of fearless and absolute 
truth. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 
ARNOLD BENNETT 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Journalism for Women. A Practical Guide. London 
and New York: John Lane, 1898. Reviewed: 
Academy, 53, 518; Critic, 33, 201. 

A Man from the North. London and New York: 
John Lane, 1898. Reviewed: Academy, 53, 348; 
Athenaeum, '98, 1, 370; Bookman, '07, 355. 

Polite Farces for the Drawing Room. London: Lam- 
bey, 1899. 

The Grand Babylon Hotel. London: Chatto, 1902. 
Reviewed: Academy, 62, 54; Athenoeum, '02, 1, 332; 
Spectator, 88, 146. 

Anna of the Five Towns. London: Chatto, 1902. 
New York: McClure, Phillips, 1903. Reviewed: 
Academy, QS, 256; ih. 287; AthencBum, '02, 2, 446; 
Critic, 42, 563; Spectator, 89, 407. 

The Gates of Wrath. A Melodrama. London: 
Chatto, 1903. Reviewed: Academy, 64, 106; ib. 
129; Athenceum, '03, 1, 269- 

How to Become an Author. London: Pearson, 1903. 

Leonora. London: Chatto, 1903. Reviewed: Acad- 
emy, 65, 508; Athenceum, '03, 2, 578; Spectator, 
91, 873. 

A Great Man. London: Chatto, 1904. Reviewed: 
Academy, 66, 656; Athenaeum, '04, 1, 717; Spec- 
tator, 93, 58. 

Ballads of the Briny and Other Verses. London: 
Gay & R., 1904. 

417 



418 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Teresa of W ailing Street. London: Chatto, 1904. 
Reviewed: Athenceum, '04, 2, 586. 

Tales of the Five Towns. London: Chatto, 1905. 
Reviewed: Academy, 6S, 83; Athenceum, '05, 1, 
174; Spectator, 94, 221. 

Loot of Cities. London: Alston Rivers, 1905. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 69, 1009- 

Sacred and Profane Love. London: Chatbo, 1905. 
Reviewed: Academy, 69, 1032; Athenceum, '05, 2, 
539. 

Hugo, a Fantasia on Modern Themes. London: 
Chatto, 1906; New York: Buckles, 1906. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 70, 92; Athenceum, '06, 1, 131; 
Nation, 84, 61; New York Times, 12, 11; Spec- 
tator, 96, 152. 

Whom God Hath Joined. London: Nutt, 1906. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '06, 2, 731. 

The Ghost. A Fantasia, etc. London: Chatto, 1907. 
Reviewed: Academy, 72, 143; Bookman (London), 
32, 214; New York Times, 12, 378; Sat. Rev., 
103, 274. 

The Reasonable Life. Essays. London: Fifield, 
1907; New York: Doran, 1910. 

The Grim Smile of the Five Towns. Short Stories. 
London: Chapman, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 
73, 731; Bookman (London), 32, 178; Spectator, 

99, 169. 
The City of Pleasure. A Fantasia, etc. London: 

Chatto, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 73, 42; Athe- 

nceum, '07, 2, 579- 
Buried Alive. London: Chapman, 1908; New York: 

Brentano's, I9IO. Reviewed: Academy, 75, 19; 

Bookman, 31, 642; Nation, 91, S65', Spectator, 

101, 25. 
How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. Lon- 
don: New Age Press, I9O8; New York: Doran, 

1910. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 419 

The Old Wives' Tale. London: Chapman, I9O8; New 
York: Doran, ipop. Reviewed: Nation (London), 
5, 314; Nation (N. Y.), 89, S5Q\ Independent, 67, 
547; Spectator, 101, 950. 

The Human Machine. London: New Age Press, 
I9O8; New York, Doran, I9IO. 

Cupid and Commonsense. London: New Age Press, 
1909. 

Literary Taste and Horv to Form It. London: New 
Age Press, 1909; New York: Doran, I910. 

The Glimpse. London: Chapman, 1909; New York: 
Appleton, 1909. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 2, 
1522; Nation (London), 6, 133; Spectator, 103, 
851. 

Helen with the High Hand. London: Chapman, 
1910 ; New York: Doran, I9IO. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '10, 1, 455; Bial, 49, 382; Nation, 91, 472; 
Sat. Rev., 109, 469; Spectator, 104, 548. 

What the Public Wants. A Play in Four Acts. Lon- 
don: F. Palmer, 1910; New York: Doran, I91O. 
Reviewed: Athenoeum, '09, 1, 683. 

Clayhanger. London: Methuen, I9IO; New York: 
Dutton, 1910. Reviewed: Athenaeum,, '10, 2, 453; 
Bookman (London), 39, 45; Bookman (N. Y.), 32, 
434; Cur. Lit., 50, 107; Dial, 49, 381; Indep., 69, 
928; Nation (London), 7, 920; Nation (N. Y.), 
91, 472; Neiv York Times, 15, 599; Nth. Amer. 
Rev., 192, 849; Outlook, 96, 668; Rev. of Rev., 
4>3, 117; Sat. Rev., 110, 554; Spectator, 105, 
654. 

Fame and Fiction: An Inquiry into Certain Reputa- 
tions. London: Grant Richards, 1910. 

The Card. London: Methuen, 1911; New York (un- 
der title, Denry the Audacious): Dutton, 191I. 
Reviewed: Indep., 70, 619; Spectator, IO6, 451. 

Hilda Less ways. London: Methuen, 1911; New 
York: Dutton, I9II. 



420 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In collaboration with Eden Phillpotts: 

Sinews of War. London: Werner Laurie^ 1906. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 71, 50.3; Atlienoeum, '06, 2, 687. 

The Statue. London: Cassel, 1908; New York: 
Moffat, Yard, 1908. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '08, 1, 
476. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Beerbohm, Max. Article based on What the Public 
^ Wants. Sat. Rev., 107, 591. 

Bettany, F. C, "Arnold Bennett: An Appreciation," 
Bookman (London), 39, 265. Same article, Liv. 
Age, 369, 131. 

Bookman, "Arnold Bennett" (Chronicle), 32, 3-4. 

Church Quarterly, " Democracy in English Fiction," 
April, 1911; Liv. Age, 269, 7. 

Current Literature, " Arnold Bennett, the Novelist 
of the Five Towns," 50, 553. 

Current Literature, " Bennett on the Art of Living," 
51, 59. 

Dawson, Corningsby W., " Arnold Bennett, the Brit- 
ish Balzac," Book News Monthly, 29, 567. 

Harper's Weekly, " A Tribute to Arnold Bennett," 
55, 35. 

Harris, G. W., " Arnold Bennett, a New Master in 
English Fiction," Rev. of Rev., 43, 506. 

Howells, W. D., " Speaking of Mr. Bennett," Har- 
per's, 122, 633. 
. Nicoll, Dr. Robertson, Article based on The Old 
1/ Wives' Tale. British Weekly, 1908. 

JOSEPH CONRAD 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River. Lon- 
don: Unwin, 1895; pop. ed., Nash, 1904; New 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 421 

York: Macmillan^ 1895. Reviewed: Academy, 47, 
502; Athenceum, '95, 1, 671 ; Bookman, 2, 39- 

An Outcast of the Islands. London: Unwin, 1896; 
New York: Appleton (Town and Country Libr. 
No. 198), 1896. Reviewed: Academy, 49, 525, and 
73, 194; Athenaeum, '96, 2, 91 ; Bookman, 4, 166; 
N, Y. Times, 'QQ, Sept. 25, 10; Sat. Rev., 81, 509. 

The Nigger of the Narcissus: A Tale of the Sea. 
London: Fleinemann, 1897; New York (under the 
title of The Children of the Sea), Dodd, Mead, 
1894; new ed. (Phoenix Series), 1904. Reviewed: 
Academy, 53, suppl. Jan. 1, 1 and 53 and l63; 
Bookman, 8, 91; Book Buyer (T. R. Sullivan), 16, 
350; III. London News (James Payne), 112, 50, 
and 172; Nation, 67, 53; iV. Y. Times, '98, May 21, 
344; Pall Mall Mag., 14, 428; Speaker, 17, 83. 

Tales of Unrest. London: Unwin^ 1898; new ed., 
1909; New York: Scribner, 1898. Reviewed: 
Academy, 53, 417, and 56, 66', Athenceum, '98, 1, 
564; Book Buyer, 16, 350; Lit. World (London), 
57, 534; Nation, 67, 53. 

Lord Jim: A Tale. London: Blackwood & S., 1900; 
New York: Doubleday, McCl., 1900. Serialized 
in Blackwood's, 1900. Reviewed: Academy, 59, 
443; Athenceum, '00, 2, 576; Bookman, 13, 187; 
N. Y. Times, '00, Nov. 10, 770, and Dec. 1, 836 
and 839; Outlook, 66, 711; Speaker, N.S., 3, 215; 
Spectator, 85, 753. 

Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Tales. London: 
Blackwood, 1902; New York: McClure, Phillips', 
1903. Reviewed: Academy, 63, 6O6; Athenceum, 
'02, 2, 824; Indep., 55, 801; Nation, 76, 478; 
N. Y. Times (Alden), '02, Dec. 13, 898, and '03, 
Apr. 4, 224; Speaker, N.S. (Masefield), 7, 442. 

Typhoon and Other Stories. London: Heinemann, 
1903; New York Typhoon (published separately), 
illus., Putnam, 1902; Falk, Amy Foster, To-mor- 



42^ BIBLIOGRAPHY 

row: Three Stories, McClure, Phillips, 1903. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 64<, 463; Athenoeum, '03, 1, 558; 
Bookman, 18, 310; Forum, 34, 400; Harper's 
Weekly, 46, 1412; N. Y. Times, '02, Sept. 20, 626, 
and '03, Oct. 24, 756; Reader, 1, 101. 

Nostromo : A Tale of the Seaboard. London and New 
York: Harper, 1904. Reviewed: Athenceum, '04, 
2, 619; Bookman, 20, 217; Critic, 46, 377; Dial, 
38, 126; Indep., 58, 557; N. Y. Times, '04, Oct. 29, 
735, and Dec. 31, 944; Spectator, 93, 800. 

The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions. 
London: Methuen, 1906; New York: Harper, 1906, 
Reviewed: Academy, 71, 393; Athenceum, '06, 2, 
513; Outlook (London), 18, 480; Spectator, 97, 
888. 

The Secret Agent. London: Methuen, 1907; New 
York: Harper, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 74, 
413; Athenceum, '07, 2, 361; Bookman (Stewart 
Edward White), 21, 531, and 669; Cur. Lit., 44, 
223; Dial, 43, 252; Indep., 64, 105; Outlook (Lon- 
don), 20, 652; Outlook (New York), 87, 309; 
Spectator, 99, 400. 

A Set of Six. London: Methuen, I9O8. Reviewed: 
Athenaeum, '08, 2, 237; Outlook (London), 22, 246; 
Spectator, 101, 237. 

A Point of Honor: A Military Tale. (Being the 
fifth tale in the preceding volume.) New York: 
McClure, Phillips, I9O8. Serialized in Forum, 
I9O8. Reviewed: Dial, 46, 263; Indep., 65, IO66; 
Nation, 87, 364; N. Y. Times, 13, 612, and 
616. 

Under Western Eyes. London: Methuen, 1911; New 
York: Harper, 1911- Reviewed: Academy, 81, 
699; Athenaeum, '11, 2, 483; Bookman, 34, 440; 
Cur. Lit., 52, 236; Nation (London), 10, 140; N. 
Y. Times, 16, 818; Nth. Amer., 194, 935; ^ai. Rev., 
112, 495. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 423 

A Personal Record. London: Methuen, 1912; New 
York: Harper, 1912. 

In Collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer: 

The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story. London: 
Heinemann, 1901; New York: McClure, Phillips, 
1901. Reviewed: Academy, 60, 554<, and 61, 93; 
Athenceum, '01, 2, 151; N. Y. Times, '01, July 13, 
^99, and Aug. 24, 603; Outlook, 68, 458 ; Spectator, 
87, 61. 

Romance: A Novel. London: Smith, Elder, 1903; 
Nelson, 1909; New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904. 
Reviewed: Academy, 65, 469; Athenceum, '03, 2, 
10; Bookman, 20, 544; Dial, 37, 37; N. Y. Times, 
'04, May 14, 325; Outlook, 77, 424. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Academy, "Mr. Conrad's Way," 64, 463; references, 
55, 82, and 6Q, 198. 

Alden, W. L., References in " London Letter," N. Y. 
Times Sup., '99, May 6, 304, and '04, Feb. 13, 109. 

Bjorkman, E., "A Master of Literary Color," Rev. 
of Rev., 45, 557. 

Bookman, " Joseph Conrad's Home," with illustra- 
tion (Chronicle), 19, 449. 

Book Buyer, " Joseph Conrad," 16, 389- 

Clifford, H., " The Art of Joseph Conrad," Spectator, 
89, 827; same article. Living Age, 236, 120; " The 
Genius of Joseph Conrad," Nth. Am. Review, 178, 
842 and reference. Harper's Weekly, 49, 59. 

Conrad, Joseph, " The Inheritors," author's letter to 
N. Y. Times Sup., '01, Aug. 24, 603. 

Curran, E. F., "Joseph Conrad: a Master of Lan- 
guage," Catholic World, 92, 796. 

Current Literature, Reference, 30, 222. 



424 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Galsworthy^ John, " Joseph Conrad/' Fortnightly Re- 
view, 89, 627; same article, Living Age, 257, 416. 

Gibbon, Percival, " Critical Sketch of Conrad," Book- 
man (London), 39, 177. 

Macy, John Albert, " The Writings of Joseph Con- 
rad," Atlantic Monthly, 98, 697, and " Joseph 
Conrad — A Unique Writer of the Sea " (based on 
the preceding). Current Literature, 42, 58. 

Portraits of Conrad, Academy, 55, 82; Independent, 
65, 1066, and Review of Reviervs, 27, 630. 

Vorse, M. H., "A Writer Who Knows the Sea," 
Critic, 43, 280. 



" FRANK DANBY " 

(Mrs. Julia Frankau) 

i. published volumes, with reviews 

a. Published under Pseudonym: 

Dr. Phillips : A Maida Vale Idyll. London : Vizetelly, 
1887; Chicago: Laird (Pastime Series No. 16), 
1895. 

A Babe in Bohemia. London: Blackett, 1889; 3d 
ed., 1890; New York: Ogilvie (Fireside Series No. 
92), 1889. 

A Copper Crash: Founded on Fact. London: Tri- 
scheler, 1889- 

Pigs in Clover. London: Heinemann, 1903; Phila- 
delphia: Lippincott, 1903. Reviewed: Acaderny, 
64, 462 and 509; Athenceum, '03, 1, 334; Book- 
man, 17, 509; Critic, 43, 374; Dial, 35, 64; Lamp, 
27, 160. 

Baccarat: A Novel. London: Heinemann, 1904; pop. 
ed., 1911; Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1904. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '04, 2, 870. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 425 

The Sphinx's Laxvyer. London: Heinemann, 1906; 
pop. ed., 1909; New York: Stokes, 1906. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 10, 383; Athenaeum, 'OQ, 1, 542. 

A Coquette in Crape: A Tragedy of Circumstance. 
London: Chatto, 1907; new ed., I9IO. 

The Heart of a Child. Being Passages from the 
Early Life of Sally Snape, Lady Kidderminster. 
London: Hutchinson, 1908; pop. ed., 1909; New 
York: Macmillan Co., I9O8. Reviewed: Athenaeum, 
'08, 1, 349; Booh^nan, 27, 303; Dial (W. M. 
Payne), 44, 352; Independent, 65, 551 ; Nation, 86, 
333; N. Y. Times, 13, 182, and 337; Outlook, 89, 
39; Putnam's, 4, 241; Rev. of Rev., 37, 765; Sat. 
Rev., 105, 442; Spectator, 100, 582. 

An Incompleat Etonian. London: Heinemann, 1909; 
New York: (under title of Sebastian) Macmillan 
Co., 1909. Reviewed: Atlantic, 104, 684; Forum, 
41, 482; Indep., 66, 1343; Lit. Dig., 39, 441; N. 
Y. Times, 14, 270; Outlook, 92, 290; Sat, Rev., 
107, 529; Spectator, 102, 671. 

Let the Roof Fall In. London: Hutchinson, I91O; 
New York: Appleton, I9IO. Reviewed: Athenaeum, 
'10, 2, 517; Bookman, 32, 424. 

Joseph in Jeopardy. London: Hutchinson, 1912; 
New York: Macmillan Co., 1912. 

b. Published under name of Mrs. Julia Frankau: 

Eighteenth Century Artists and Engravers : William 
Ward, A.R.A., and James Ward, R.A.: Their Lives 
and Works. London: Macmillan, 1904; New York: 
The Macmillan Company, 1904. Reviewed: Na- 
tion, 79, 464. 

Eighteenth Century Colour Prints. Essay on Cer- 
tain Stipple Engravers and Their Work in Colour. 
London: Macmillan, 1901; New York: Macmillan 
Co., 1901. Reviewed: Nation, 72, 115. 



426 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Story of Emma, Lady Hamilton. London: Mac- 
millan, 1911; New York: Macmillan Co., 1911. 



II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Bookman, The, " The Literary Work of Frank 
Danby/' 27, 7. 

Harris, Frank, Article based on The Story of Emma, 
Lady Hamilton. Academy, 81, 788 and 818. 

Marsh, E. C, "The Novels of Frank Danby," 
Forum, S9, 538. 

Peck, H. T., Article based on Pigs in Clover. Cos- 
mopolitan, 36, 251. 

WILLIAM FREND DE MORGAN 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Joseph Vance. London: Heinemann, I906; New 
York: Henry Holt, I906. Reviewed: Academy, 71, 
112; Athenceum, '06, 2, 97; Bookman (Mary Moss), 
24, 277; Cur. Lit., 42, 344; Dial (W. M.^ayne), 
42, 13; Independent, 61, II6I; Nation, 83, 287; 
N. Y. Times, 11, 620, and 12, 395; North Amer. 
Rev. (O. H. Dunbar), 183, 1187; Outlook, 84, 582 
and 711; Putnam's, 3, 112; Sat. Rev., 102, 117; 
Spectator, 97, 172. 

Alice-f or- Short. London: Heinemann, 1907; New 
York: Henry Holt, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 
73, 658; Athenceum, '97, 2, 10; Bookman (Mary 
Moss), 25, 519; Dial (W. M. Payne), 42, 375; 
Independent, 63, 397 and 1228; Lit. Digest, 35, 
272; Nation, 84, 522; N. Y. Times, 12, S63 and 
380; North Amer. Rev. (O. H. Dunbar), 186, 449; 
Outlook, 86, 475; Putnam's, 3, 112; Sat. Rev., 104, 
54; Spectator, 99, 96. 

Somehorv Good. London: Heinemann, I9O8; New 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 427 

York: Henry Holt, 1908. Reviewed: Athenaeum, 
'08, 1, 252; Bookman (H. W. Boynton), 27, 170; 
Dial (W. M. Payne), 44, 132; Independent, 64, 
SQ9\ Nation (N. Y.), ^Q, 152; N. Y. Times, 13, 67 
and 337; Outlook, 38, 511 ; Putnam's (E. L. Gary),. 
4, 617; Rev. of Rev., 37, 767; Sat. Rev., 105, 241 ; 
Spectator, 110, 230. 

/< Never Can Happen Again. London: Heinemann, 
1909; New York: Henry Holt, 1909- Reviewed: 
Athenwum, '09, 2, 691; Dial (W. M. Payne), 47, 
384; Nation (London), 6, 414; Nation (N. Y.), 
89, 532; N. Y. Times, 14, 779; Outlook, 9S, 829; 
Spectator, 103, 953. 

An Affair of Dishonor. London: Heinemann, 1910; 
New York: Henry Holt, 1910. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '10, 2, 415; Bookman, 32, 432; Dial (W. M. 
Payne), 49, 286; Independent, Q9, 1217; Nation 
(N. Y.), 91, 264; N. Y. Times, 15, 520; Outlook, 
96, 331; Sat. Rev., 110, 364; Spectator, 105, 804. 

A Likely Story. London: Heinemann, 1911; New 
York: Henry Holt, 191 L Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'11, 2, 621. * 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Adcock, A. St. John, " William de Morgan," Book- 
man (London), 38, 195. 

Boynton, H. W., " The Literary Work of de Mor- 
gan," Nation (N. Y.), 89, 532. 

Cecil, Eleanor, article based on Somehow Good, Liv. 
Age, 257, 567 (reprinted from Cornhill Magazine). 

Hardin, C. P., " A Letter to William de Morgan," 
Atlantic, 106, 249- 

Harris, S. W., " A Master Novelist," Rev. of Rev., 
42, 252. 

Living Age, " The Victorian English in Joseph 
Vance," 255, 811. 



428 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Lucas, E. v., " William de Morgan, Artist, Potter, 
and Novelist," Outlook, 90, 711. 

Outlook, " De Morgan's Confession," 96, 375. 

Phelps, W. L., " William de Morgan," in Essays on 
Modern Novelists, New York: 1910. 

Sparrow, W. S., " William de Morgan and his Pot- 
tery," Studio (London), 17, 222. 

Stoker, Bram, " William de Morgan's Habits of 
Work," World's Work, 16, 10,337. 

MRS. HENRY E. DUDENEY 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

A Man with a Maid. London: Heinemann (Pioneer 
Series), 1898. Reviewed: Athenceum, '98, 1, 5Q5; 
Academy, 53 (Suppl. Feb. 19), 202. 

Hagar of Hamerton. London: Pearson, 1898. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '98, 1, 786. 

The Maternity of Harriott Wicken. London: Heine- 
mann, 1899; pop. ed., 1910; New York: Maemillan 
Co., 1899. Reviewed: Athenceum, '99, 1, 527; Dial, 

n, 74. 

Folly Corner. London: Heinemann, 1900; pop. ed., 
1909; New York: Holt, 1900. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '00, 1, 142; Bookman, 11, 342; Dial (W. 
M. Payne), 29, 12; Sat. Rev., 89, 368; Spectator, 
84, 176. 

Men of Marlowe's. London: Long, 1900; New York: 
Holt, 1900. Reviewed: Academy, 59, 383; Book 
Buyer, 21, 300; Bookman (H. f. Peck), 12, 506; 
Outlook, 66, 517. 

The Third Floor. London: Methuen, 1901. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 60, 248; Athenceum, '01, 1, 495; 
Spectator, 86, 574. 

Spindle and Plough. London: Heinemann, 1901; 
New York: Dodd, 1902. Reviewed: Academy, 61, 



BIBLIOGRAPPIY 429 

634; Dial S3, 61; Indep., 54>, 1373; Spectator, 87, 
287. 

Robin Brilliant. London: Hodder & S., 1902; New 
York: Dodd, 1903. Reviewed, Lamp, 26, 254; 
Spectator, 89, 839- 

The Story of Susan. London: Heinemann, 1903; 
New York: Dodd, 1904. Reviewed: Acadeiny, 65, 
504; Athenaeum, '03, 2, 424; Independ., 5Q, 1087; 
Sat. Rev., 90, 592; Spectator, 91, 814. 

The Wise Woods. London: Heinemann, 1905. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 68, 592; Athenceum, '05, 1, 
561. 

A Country Bunch. London: Hurst & B., 1905. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 69, 809; Athenaeum, '05, 2, 240 
Spectator, 95, 125. 

Gossips Green. London: Cassell, 1906; new ed. 
1909. Reviewed: Academy, 71, 286; Athenaeum 
'06, 2, 362; Spectator, 97, 579- 

The Orchard Thief. London: Heinemann, 1907 
Boston (under the title of Trespass) : Small, May 
nard, 1909- Reviewed: Athenaeum, '07, 2, 650 
N. Y. Times, 14, 584; Outlook, 93, 276; Sat. Rev., 
104, 732; Spectator, 99, 993. 

Rachel Lorian. London: Heinemann, 1909; New 
York: Duffield, 1909. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 

1, 127; Bookman, 29, 187; Nation, 88, 255; N. Y. 
Times, 14, 118; Nth. Amer., 19O, 268; Sat. Rev., 
107, 146; Spectator, 102, 310. 

All Times Pass Over. London: J. Ouseley, 1909. 
The Shoulder Knot. London: Cassell, 1909; New 
York: Cassell, 19IO. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 

2, 422; Bookman, 31, 208; Nation, 90, 318; N. Y. 
Times, 15, 105; Nth. Amer., I92, 139- 

A Sense of Scarlet: and Other Stories, London: 
Heinemann, I909. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 2, 
727; Spectator, 103, 1003. 

Married When Suited. London: S. Paul, I9II. Re- 



430 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

viewed: Athenceum, '11;, 2, 215; Nation (London), 
10, 32. 

A Large Room. London: Heinemann, 1910. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 80, 43; Atlienceum, '10, 2, 621. 

Maids* Money. London: Heinemann, IQH; New 
York: Duffield, 1912. Reviewed: Atlienceum, '11, 
2, 729. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Bookman, The, " The Home of Mrs. Dudeney," 16, 

533. 
Bookman, The (London), Sketch, with Portrait, 4-0, 

2m. 

Independent, The, " Mrs. Dudeney," 54, 2770. 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

From the Four Winds. (By " John Sinjohn.") 
London: Unwin, 1897. Reviewed: Academy, 52 y 
Suppl. July 17, p. 35; Lit. World, N.S., 56, 33. 

Jocelyn: A Tale. (By "John Sinjohn.") London; 
Duckworth, 1898. 

Villa Rubein: A Novel. (By "John Sinjohn.") 
London: Duckworth, 1900; New York: Putnam, 
1908. New Edit., Villa Rubein and Other Stories. 
London: Duckworth, 1909- Reviewed: Academy, 
59, 420; Bookman, 28, 47; Lit. World, N.S., 62, 
458; Nation, 87, 119; N. Y. Times, 13, 338 and 
427. 

A Man of Devon. (By "John Sinjohn.") London: 
Blackwood, 1901. Reviewed: Academy, 61, 386; 
Athenceum, '01, 2, 697. 

The Island Pharisees. London: Heinemann, 1904; 
new ed., revised and re- written: Heinemann, 1908; 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 431 

New York: Putnam, 1901; new ed., Putnam, 1908. 
Reviewed: Athenceum, 'Oi, 1, 391; Lit. World, N.S., 
69y 219; Nation, 78, 501, and 87, 120; Spectator, 
92, 608. 

The Man of Property. London: Heinemann, I906; 
New York: Putnam, I906. Reviewed: Academy, 
70, 309; Athenwum, '06, 1, 416; Outlook, 84, 911; 
N. Y. Times, 12, 391; Putnam's (C. A. Pratt), 2, 
185; Times (London), 5, II6; Spectator, 96, 
587. 

The Country House. London: Heinemann, 1907; 
New York: Putnam, 1907- Reviewed: Academy, 
72, 251 ; Athenceum, '07, 1, 318; Bookrnan, 25, 497; 
Cath. World, 85, 680; Dial (W. M. Payne), 43, 
62; Forum, 39, 114; Independent, 6S, 96; Nation, 
84, 414; N. Y. Times (Lewis Melville), 12, 394; 
Nth. Amer. (O. H. Dunbar), 185, 777; Outlook, 
86, 254; Putnam's (C. A. Pratt), 2, 186; Sat. Rev., 
103, 433; Times (London), 6, 77. 

A Commentary. London: Richards, 1908; Duck- 
worth, 191 0; New York: Putnam, I9O8. Reviewed: 
Athenaeum, '08, 1, 126; Nation, 87, 317; Sat. Rev., 
105,826. 

Fraternity. London: Heinemann, 1909; New York: > 
Putnam, 1909. Reviewed: Athenceum, '09, 1, 312; 
Atlantic, 103, 706; Dial, 46, 369; Forum, 41; Lit. 
Digest, 38, 764; Nation, 88, 466; N. Y. Times, 14, 
160, and 14, 374; Outlook, 92, 19; Putnam's (H. 
W. Boynton), 6, 495; Sat. Rev., 107, 341. 

Plays: The Silver Box. Joy. Strife. London: j^. 
Duckworth, 1909; New York: Putnam,' I909. Re- ^ 
viewed: Nation, 89, 498; A^ Y. Times, 14, 477; 
Spectator, 102, 498. 

The Silver Box: A Comedy in Three Acts. London: 
Duckw^orth, I91O. 

Joy: A Play on the letter " I " in Three Acts. Lon- 
don: Duckworth, I9IO. 



432 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Strife: A Drama in Three Acts. London: Duck- 
worth, 1910. Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, I, 327. 

Justice: A Tragedy in Four Acts, London: Duck- 
worth, 1910 ; New York: Scribner, I9IO. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '80, 2, 136; Independent, Q^, 
931; Nation, 91, 398; N. Y. Times, 15, 582. 

A Motley. London: Heinemann, I9IO; New York: 
Scribner, 19IO. Reviewed: Bookman, 31, 642; 
Dial, 49, 70; Nation, 9I, 15; Spectator, 105, QS. 

The Patricians. London: Heinemann, I91I; New 
York: Scribner, I9II. Serialized in the Atlantic, 
Oct., 1910 — May, I9II. Reviewed: Academy, 80, 
554; Athenaeum, '11, 1, 440; Atlantic (Margaret 
Sherwood), 108, 559; Bellman (R. Burton), 10, 
562 ; Bookman, SS,SIS; Cath. World, 93, 393 ; Dial, 
(W. M. Payne), 50, 442; Independent, 70, 1372; 
Lit. Digest, 42, 634; Nation, 92, 399; N. Y. Times, 
16, 154 and 222; Nth. Amer., 194, 154; Outlook, 
97, 629; Sat. Rev., Ill, 337; Spectator, IO6, 408. 

Little Dream: An Allegory in Six Scenes. London: 
Duckworth, 191I ; New York: Scribner, 191I. Re- 
viewed: Independent, 71, 46; Nation, 93, 270; N. 
Y. Times, I6, 704; Sat. Rev., 112, 88. 

The Eldest Son: A Play. London: Duckworth, 1912. 

The Pigeon: A Fantasy in Three Acts. London: 
Duckworth, 1912. 

Plays. Second Series: Justice, The Little Dream, 
The Eldest Son. London: Duckworth, 1912. 

Wild Oats: Moods, Songs, and Doggerels. London: 
Heinemann, 1912; New York: Scribner, 1912. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Baugham, E. A., ** Galsworthy as Dramatist," Fort- 
nightly, 91, 971. 

Bjorkman, E., "Galsworthy: an Interpreter of Mo- 
dernity," Rev. of Rev., 43, 634. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 433 

Current Literature, " The Dual Genius of Gals- 
worthy," 48, 81. 

Current Literature, " The Vital Literary Art of 
Galsworthy," 45, 408. 

Dukes, A., " Study of Galsworthy," Modern Dram- 
atists, 141. 

Findlater, J. H., " Social Problems in Fraternity," 
Liv. Age, 264, 607. 

Kellogg, P. U., "Strife: a Drama of the Politics of 
Industry," Survey, 23, 705. 

Macartney, M. H. H., " The Novels of Galsworthy," 
Westminster Rev., 171, 682. 

Outlook, The, " Galsworthy, A Writer of Distinc- 
tion," 100, 608. 

Skelton, L, "Galsworthy: an Appreciation," The 
World To-day, 21, 995. 

MAURICE HEWLETT 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Earthwork out of Tuscany: Impressions and Trans- 
lations. London: Dent, 1895; revised ed., illus. by 
J. Kerr-Lanson, Dent, 1899; 3d ed., Macmillan, 
1901; New York: Putnam, 1895; rev. ed., 1899- 
Reviewed: Athenceum, '95, 1, 771; Indep., 52, 781. 

Masques of Dead Florentines, Death's Choicest 
Pieces, and The Great Game, London: Dent, 
1895; new ed., 1903. 

Songs and Meditations. London: Constable, 1896; 
New York: Macmillan, 1898. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '97, 2, 288. 

The Forest Lovers. London: Macmillan, 1898; New 
York: Macmillan Co., 1898. Reviewed: Academy, 
54!, 57, and 56, 66; Book Buyer (M. Merrington), 
17, 58. 

Pan and the Young Shepherd: A Pastoral in Two 



434 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Acts. London and New York: Lane, 1898; Lon- 
don: Heinemann, 1906; New York: Macmillan Co., 
1901. Reviewed: Academy, 55, 281. 

Little Novels of Italy. London: Chapman, 1899; 
New York: Macmillan Co., 1899- Reviewed: 
Academy, 57, 371; Athenceu7n, '99, 2, 523. 

Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay. London: 
Macmillan, 1900; New York: Macmillan Co., 1900. 
Reviewed: Academy, 59, 491 ; Book Buyer, 22, 144<; 
Cath. World, 72, 807; Dial (W. M. Payne), 30, 
110; Fortnightly, 75, 61; Indep., 53, 44; Nation, 
72, 76; Spectator, 85, 753. 

New Canterbury Tales. London: Constable, 1901; 
New York: Macmillan Co., 1901. Reviewed: 
Academy, 61, 287; Athenceum, '01, 2, 516; Atlantic 
(F. J. Mather, Jr.), 89, 130; Bookman, 14, 503; 
Critic, 40, 65 ; Indep., 53, 2652 ; Outlook, 69, 423 ; 
Spectator, 87, 486. 

The Queen's Quair: or. Six Years' Tragedy. Lon- 
don: Macmillan, 1904; New York: Macmillan Co., 

1904. Reviewed: Academy, 66, 684; Athenceum, 
'04, 2, 72; Cur. Lit., 37, 82; Indep., 56, 1502; 
Lamp, 28, 428; Nation (A. M. Logan), 79, 14; 
Outlook, 77, 421; Sat. Rev., 98, 53; Spectator, 
93, 21. 

The Road in Tuscany: A Commentary. Two vols. 
London: Macmillan, 1904; new ed., illus. by Joseph 
Pennell, 1906; New York: Macmillan Co., 1904. 

Fond Adventures: Tales of the Youth of the World. 
London: Macmillan, 1905; New York: Harper, 

1905. Reviewed: Academy, 68, 419; Athenceum, 
'05, 1, 716; Indep., 58, 130*9; Spectator, 94, 680. 

The Fool Errant: Memoirs of Francis-Anthony 
Strelley, Esq., Citizen of Lucca. London: Heine- 
mann, 1905; Newnes, 1907; New York: Macmillan, 
1905. Reviewed: Indep., 59, 519 and 1151. 

The Stooping Lady. London: Macmillan, 1907; New 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 455 

York: Macmillan Co., 1907. Serialized in Fort- 
nightly and Bookman, Jan.-Dec., 1907. Reviewed: 
Academy, 73, 115; Athenaeum, '07, 2, 475; Spec- 
tator, 99, 574. 

The Spanish Jade, London: Cassell, 1908; New 
York: Doubleday, Page, 1908. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '08, 1, 633; Indep., Q5, 555; Spectator, 101, 
64. 

Halfway House: A Comedy of Degrees. London: 
Chapman & H., I9O8; New York: Scribner, I9O8. 
Reviewed: Indep., 65 , 555; Sat. Rev., IO6, 487; 
Spectator, 101, IO6I. 

Artemision: Idylls and Songs. London: E. Mathews, 
1909; New York: Scribner, I909. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '09, 1, 670; Bookman, 29, 366; Dial 
(W. M. Payne), 47, 98; Indep., 67, 658; Nation 
(London), 5, 613; Nation (New York), 89, 55; 
N. Y. Times, 14, 300; Nth. Amer., I90, 704; Rev. 
of Rev., 40, 123; Spectator, 103, 19. 

Open Country: A Comedy with a Sting. London: 
Macmillan, 1909; New York: Scribner, I909. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '09, 2, 325; Bookman, 30, 263; 
Dial, 47, 237; Indep., 68, 152; Nation, 89, 305; 
N. Y. Times, 14, 565; Nth. Amer., I90, 838; Out- 
look, 93, 276; Sat. Rev., 108, 320. 

Ruinous Face. New York: Harper, 1909. Re- 
viewed: Dial, 47, 464; Outlook, 93, 559. 

Letters to Sanchia upon Things as They Are: Ex- 
tracted from the Correspondence of Mr. John 
Maxwell Senhouse. London: Macmillan, 1910; 
New York: Scribner, I9IO. Serialized in Fort- 
nightly and Putnam's, July-Sept., 1909. Reviewed: 
Indep., 69, 652; Nation, 90, 6IO; N. Y. Times, 15, 
431; Outlook, 96, 302. 

Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution. London: 
Macmillan, I9IO; New York: Scribner, 19IO. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '10, 2, 353; Bookman, 32, 171; 



y 



V 



436 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Dial, 49, 287; Indep., 69, 651; Lit. Dig., 41, 819; 
Nation (London), 8, 136; N. Y. Times, 15, 491; 
Outlook, 96, 202; Sat. Rev., 110, 427; Spectator, 
105, 611. 
Brazenhead the Great. London: Smith, E., 1911; 
New York: Scribner, 1911- Reviewed: Academy, 

80, 456; Athenceum, '11, 1, 473; Bookman, 23, 415; 
Indep., 71, 206; Lit. Dig., 42, 895; Nation, 92, 
1476; N. Y. Times, 16, 222 and 303; Outlook, 98, 
4<l;Rev. of Rev., 4^2, 760. 

The Agonists: A Trilogy of God and Man. London: 
Macmillan, 1911; New York: Scribner, 1911. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 80, 679; Athenceum, '11, 1, 622; 
Bookman, 22, 622; Sat. Rev., Ill, 617. 

The Song of Renny. London: Macmillan, 1911; 
New York: Scribner, 1911. Reviewed: Academy, 

81, 507; Athenceum, '11, 2, 385; Bookman, 24>, 
202; Lit. Dig., 43, 807; Nation, 92, 468; N. Y. 
Times, l6, 624; Outlook, 99, 404. 

Mrs. Launcelot, Serialized, Metropolitan Mag., 
1911-12. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Academy, The, " Maurice Hewlett," 55, 429. 
Beerbohm, Max, " Hewlett at the Court Theater,'* 

Sat. Rev., 101, 294. 
Book News Monthly, The, " Maurice Hewlett, the 

Man and his Career," 29, 147. 
Book News Monthly, The, " Hewlett in Politics," 29, 

150. 
Bronner, Milton, Maurice Hewlett: Being a Critical 

Study of his Prose and Poetry. Boston: J. W. 

Luce, 1910. 
Bronner, Milton, " Maurice Hewlett," Indep., 69, 652. 
Bronner, Milton, " Hewlett as a Poet," Critic, 42, 169. 
Current Literature, Sketch of Hewlett, 30, 552. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 437 

Current Literature, " Hewlett^ Phraseur/' 32, 108. 

English Illustrated Magazine, " Maurice Hewlett/' 
with Bibliography, 50, 426. 

Conrad, Hermann, " Maurice Hewlett/' Preuss. Jahr- 
buch, 105, 266. 

Hale, Louise Closser_, " Hewlett's Italy/' Bookman, 
16, 134. 

Hancock, A. E., " The Style of Maurice Hewlett," 
Era, 12, 32. 

Harris, G. W., "The Work of Maurice Hewlett/' 
Rev. of Rev., 40, 251. 

Harrison, Frederic, " Maurice Hewlett/' Fortnightly, 
75, 61. 

Hartman, " Hewlett's Literary Style," Harper's TV., 
49, 577. 

Holbrook, R., " Probable Sources of the Fool Er- 
rant," Bookman, 23, 447. 

Mabie, Hamilton Wright, " An Appreciation of 
Maurice Hewlett," Bookman, 26, 360. 

Macdonell, H., *' Maurice Hewlett," Bookman (Lon- 
don), 38, 185. 

Marsh, Edward Clark, " Hewlett and his Work," 
Forum, 29, S9. 

Marsh, Edward Clark, " Hewlett, Meredithian," 
Bookman, 26, 361. 

Outlook, The, " Literary Personalities: Maurice Hew- 
lett/' 81, 724. 

Outlook, The, ** Maurice Hewlett: A Significant 
Writer," 66, 877. 

Parrott, T. M., *' Maurice Hewlett/' Booklover's 
Magazine, 4, 69S. 

ROBERT HICHENS 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

The Green Carnation. London: Heinemann (pub- 
lished anonymously in Pioneer Series), 1894; New 



438 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

York: Appleton, 1894; reissue^ Kennerley, 1908. 
Reviewed: Academy, 46, 348; Athenceum, '94, 9., 
419 and 496; Critic, 25, 228 and 255; Lit. World, 
N.S., 50, 277. 

An Imaginative Man. London: Heinemann, 1895; 
Newnes, 1906; New York: Appleton, 1895. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '92, 2, 219; Critic, 27, 440; 
Dial, 19, 255; Lit. World, N.S., 52, 50; Spectator, 
75, 153. 

The Folly of Eustace and Other Stories. London: 
Heinemann, 1896; New York: Appleton, 1896. 
Reviewed: Academy, 49, 445; Critic, 29, 172; Dial, 
21, 289; Lit. World, N.S., 53, 431. 

Flames: A London Phantasy. London: Heinemann, 
1897; Chicago: H. S. Stone, 1897. Reviewed: 
Academy, 51, 376; Critic, 30, 421; Dial, 22, 308; 
Lit. World, N.S., 55, 410. 

Byervays. London: Methuen, 1897; Collins, 1907; 
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1897. Reviewed: Acad- 
emy, 53, 2 (Suppl. Jan. 1) ; Athenceum, '98, 1, 49; 
Critic, 32, 230; Lit. World, N.S., 57, 9- 

The Londoners : An Absurdity. London: Heinemann, 
1898; Chicago: H. S. Stone, 1898. Reviewed: 
Academy, 53, 548 (Suppl. May 21); Athenceum, 
'98, 1, 530; Critic, 33, 300; Bookman, 7, 526; Dial 
(W. M. Payne), 25, 21; Lit. World, N.S., 259; 
Spectator, 80, 630. 

Daughters of Babylon. (In collaboration with Wil- 
liam Barrett.) London: Macqueen, 1899; Phila- 
delphia: Lippincott, 1899- Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'99, 1, 368; Lit. World, N.S., 59, 217. 

The Slave: A Romance. London: Heinemann, 1899; 
Chicago: H. S. Stone, 1899- Reviewed: Academy, 
57, 601 ; Athenceum, '99, 2, 683; Bookman, 11, 284; 
Lit. World, N.S., 60, 397; Spectator, 83, 662. 

Tongues of Conscience. London: Methuen, 1900; 
Collins, 1908; New York: Stokes, 1900. Re- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 439 

viewed: Academy, 59, 282 and 383; Athenceum, 
'00, 2, 478; Lit, World, N.S., 62, 346; Spectator, 
85, 531. 

The Prophet of Berkeley Square. London : Methuen, 
1901; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '01, 2, Q95; Lit. World, N.S., 64, 455. 

Felix: Three Years of Life. London: Methuen, 1902; 
Amalgamated Press, 1908; New York: Stokes, 

1903. Reviewed: Athenceum, '02, 2, 516; Dial (W. 
M. Payne), 35, 63; Lit. World, N.S., 66, 336; In- 
dependent, 55, 1994. 

The Woman with a Fan. London: Methuen, 1904; 
Amalgamated Press, 1907; New York: Stokes, 

1904. Reviewed: Cur. Lit. (K. D. Sweetser), 37, 
4<30;Dial (W. M. Payne), 37, 38; Lit. World, N.S., 
69, 312. 

The Garden of Allah. London: Methuen, 1904; New 
York: Stokes, 1905; illustrated edition, 1907; 
Biskra edition, 191I. Reviewed: Academy, 67, 
424; Ainslee's, July, 1905; Athenceum, '04, 585; 
Atlantic, 95, 697; Bookman (D. Osborne), 24, 378; 
Book News (Norma K. Bright), March, 1905; 
Cath. World, 81, 545; Collier's, June 11, 1905; 
Critic (C. H. Dunbar), 46, 474; Dial, 38, 388; 
Edinburgh Rev., 203, 79 (reprinted, Liv. Age, 248, 
736); Independent, 56, 787; 59, 1153; Lit. Digest, 
March 4, 1905; Lit. World, N.S., 70, 383; N. Y. 
Times, 10, 394; Outlook, 79, 502; Pub. Opin., 38, 
214>;Rev. of Rev., 32, 759; Speaker, Dec. 24, 1904; 
Spectator, 93, 643. 

The Black Spaniel and Other Stories. London: 
Methuen, 1905; New York: Stokes, 1905. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '05, 2, 6O8; Academy, 69, 1079; 
Sat. Rev., 100, 6OO; Spectator, 95, 658. 

The Call of the Blood. London: Methuen, I906; 
Amalgamated Press, 1907; New York: Harper, 
1906. Reviewed: Academy, 71, 266; Athenceum, 



440 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

'06, 2, S62; Atlantic (H. J. Smith), 100, 129; 
Bookman, 24, 377; Cur. Lit., 41, 699; Dial (W. M. 
Payne), 42, 143; Independent, 61, 1229; Lit. Dig., 
33, 727 and 858; London Times, 5, 305; Nation, 
83, 396; N. Y, Times, 11, 719 and 796; North 
Amer. (Edith B. Brown), 183, 923; Outlook, 84, 
581; Rev. of Rev., 35, 120; Sat. Rev., 102, 401; 
Spectator, 97, 404. 

Barhary Sheep. New York: Harper, 1907; London: 
Methuen, 1909- Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 1, 641 ; 
Bookman (E. C. Marsh), 26, 167; Independent, 
63, 939; Nation, 85, 211; N. 7. Times, 12, 535; 
Outlook, 87, 45. 

-4 Spirit in Prison. London: Hutchinson, 1908; New 
York: Harper, 1908; Burt, 1911; serialized in 
Harper's Weekly, March- Aug., 1908. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '08, 2, 398; Bookman, 28, 262; Inde- 
pendent, 65, 947; Nation, 87, 340; N. Y. Times, 
13, 506, 615 and 743; Spectator, 101, 636. 

Egypt and her Monuments. Illustrations by Jules 
Guerin. London: Hodder & S., 1908; New York: 
Century Co., 1908; serialized. Century Mag., Feb.- 
Aug., I9O8. Reviewed: Dial, 45, 409; Internat. 
Studio, 36, Suppl. 58; Lit. Dig., 37, 901; N. Y. 
Times, 13, 751 and 773; Rev. of Rev., 38, 757; 
Spectator, 101, Suppl., 813. 

Bella Donna: A Novel. London: Heinemann, I9O8; 
Philadelphia: Lippincott, I9O8. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '09, 2, 522; Bookman, 30, 387; Spectator, 
103, 795. 

The Spell of Egypt. (Cheaper Reissue of Egypt and 
Its Monuments.^ London: Hodder & S., 1910; 
New York: Century, I9II. 

The Holy Land. Illustrations by Jules Guerin. Lon- 
don: Hodder & S., 1910; New York: Century, 1910. 
Reviewed: Bookman, 32, 387; Cath. World, 92, 
400; Dial, 49, 469; Independent, 69, 1250; Int. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 441 

Studio, 42, SuppL, 50; Lit. Dig., 41, 1101 ; Nation, 
91, 558; North Amer., 192, 841; Rev. of Rev., 42, 
759. 

The Dweller on the Threshold. London: Methuen, 
1911; New York: Century Co., 1911; serialized in 
Century Mag., Nov., 1 910- April, 1911. Reviewed: 
AthenoBum, '11, 1, 597; Atlantic, 108, 5Q6\ Book- 
man, 33, 316; Cath. World, 93, 535; Cur. Lit., 50, 
5Q2; Independent, 70, 671 ; Lit. Dig., 42, QSQ-, Na- 
tion, 92, 603; N. Y. Times, 16, 184; Sat. Rev., 
Ill, 590; Spectator, 106, 893. 

The Fruitful Vine. London: Unwin, 1911; New 
York: Stokes, 1911. Reviewed: Academy, 81, 827; 
Athenceum, '11, 2, 518; Bookman, 34, 308; Cur. 
Lit., March, 1912; Dial, 51, 470; Independent, 
11, 987; Lit. Dig., 43, 690; Nation, 93, 419; N. Y. 
Times, 16, 602; Outlook, 99, 405; Sat. Rev., 112, 
679; Spectator, 107, S6^. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Academy, " Robert Hichens," 52_, 493. 

Bookman, " Hichens at Taormina," 29, 13. 

Gaines, C. H., "Hichens: An Appreciation," Har- 
per's Weekly, 51, 1206. 

Marshall, Edward, " Robert Hichens Talks of the 
Battle of the Sexes," N. Y. Times, Oct. 1, 1911. 

Nation, " The Production of The Garden of Allah,'* 
93,401. 

Outlook, " Hichens' Opinions," 99, 304. 

Outlook, " A Successful Novel and an Unsuccessful 
Play," 99, 699- 

Warren, Garnet, " A Good-by Interview with Robert 
Hichens," N. Y. Herald, Nov. 12, 1911. 

Waugh, Arthur, " London Letter," Critic, 27, 47. 



442 BIBLIOGRAPHY 



ANTHONY HOPE 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES^ WITH REVIEWS 

A Man of Mark. London: Methuen^ 1890; Nelson, 
1911; New York: Holt (Buckram Ser.), 1895; 
Chicago: Rand, McNally (Globe Library), 1895; 
new ed. (Enterprise Series, No. 37), Weeks', 1895. 

Father Stafford: A Novel. London: Cassell, 1891; 
pop. ed., I9OO; New York: Cassell (Sunshine 
Series No. 87), 1891; Holt, new ed., 1901. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 40, 500. 

Mr. Witt's Widow : A Frivolous Tale. London : Innes, 
1892; pop. ed.. Ward, Locke, 1911; New York: 
U. S. Book Co., 1892. Reviewed: Academy, 41, 
515; Athenceum, '90, 1, 562. 

Sport Royal and Other Stories. London: Innes, 1893; 
New York: Holt (Buckram Series), 1895; holiday 
ed.. Harper, 1897. Reviewed: Academy, 4<3, 415. 

A Change of Air. London: Methuen, 1893; New 
York: Holt (Buckram Series), 1894. Reviewed: 
Academy, 44, 88. 

Half a Hero. London: Innes, 1893; New York: 
Harper (Franklin Sq. Lib.), 1893; new ed., 1895. 
Reviewed: Academy, 44, 389- 

The Prisoner of Zenda. London: Arrowsmith, 1894; 
new ed., illus. by C. D. Gibson, Arrowsmith, 
1898; Nelson, I9II; New York: Holt, 1904; 
(People's Library), Amer. News, 1899- Re- 
viewed: Academy, 45, 454. 

Dolly Dialogues. London: (Westminster Gazette Li- 
brary) Office, 1894; new ed., reprinted from West. 
Gaz., West. Gaz. Office, 1896; Nelson, 19II; New 
York: (Summer Series, No. 13), Fenno, 1895; 
(Cambridge Classics, No. 34), Hurst, I896; (in 
one volume with Sport Royal, Superb Series, No. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 443 

23), Caldwell, 1896; Russell, 1901; new ed., Holt, 
1902. Reviewed: Bookman, 14, 504. 

The God in the Car. London: Methuen, 1894; New 
York: Appleton (Town & C. Lib., No. 154), 189'i. 
Reviewed: Academy, 46, 443. 

The Indiscretion of the Duchess: A Story. London: 
Simpkin, 1894. 

The Secret of Wardale Court, and Other Stories. 
London: Wilson & M., 1894. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '95, 1, 215. 

Chronicles of Count Antonio. London: Methuen, 
1895; New York: Appleton, 1895. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '95, 2, 639. 

Comedies of Courtship. London: Innes, 1896; pop. 
ed.. Ward, Locke, 1911; New York: Scribner, 
1896. Reviewed: Academy, 49, 173; Athenceum, 
'96, 1, 215. 

The Heart of the Princess Osra. London: Long- 
mans, I896; new ed,, illus. by John Williamson, 
1900 ; New York: Stokes, 1896; (People's Library, 
No. 12), Amer. News, 19OO. 

Phroso. London: Methuen, 1897; New York: 
Stokes, 1896; (People's Library, No. 4), Amer. 
News, 1899. Reviewed: Academy, 51, 231; Athe- 
nceum, '97, 1, 343. 

Simon Dale. London: Illus. by W. St. J. Hufer, 
Methuen, 1898; New York: Stokes, 1898. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 53, SuppL, Feb. 26, 229; Athe- 
nceum, '98, 1, 217. 

Rupert of Hentzau. London: Illus. by C. D. Gibson, 
Arrowsmith, 1898; New York: Holt, 1898. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 54}, 125; Athenceum, '98, 2, 187. 

The King's Mirror. London: Methuen, 1899; New 
York: Appleton, 1899; pop. ed., Appleton, 1905. 
Reviewed: Academy, 57, 429; Athenceum, '99, 2, 
382. 

Quisante. London: Methuen, 1900; New York: 



444 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Stokes^ I9OO; (People's Library, No. 37), Amer. 
News, 1903. Reviewed: Academy, 59, 409; Athe- 
noeum, '00, 2, 475; Bookman, 12, 231; Edinburgh 
Rev., 193, 158; Sat. Rev., 90, 559; Spectator, 85, 
494. 

Tristram of Blent. London: Murray, 1901; New 
York: McClure, Phillips, I9OI. Reviewed: Acad- 
emy, 61, 133; Athenceum, '10, 2, 516; Booh Buyer, 
23, 237; Bookman, 14, 256; Indep., 53, 2844; Om^ 
look, 69, 239 and 430; Westminster Rev. (E. 
Gerard), 156, 651. 

The Intrusions of Peggy. London: Smith, Elder, 
1902; New York: Harper, 1902. Reviewed: Acad- 
emy, 63, 441; Independent, 54, 2598; Reader, 1, 
205; Spectator, 89, 6l3. 

Double Harness. London: Hutchinson, 1904; New 
York: McClure, Phillips, 1904. Reviewed: Acad- 
emy, 67, 180; Athenceum, '04, 2, 344. 

A Servant of the People. London: Methuen, 1905; 
New York: Stokes, 1905. Reviewed: Academy, 69, 
1025; Athenceum, '05, 2, 368; Indep., 59, 1045 and 
1051. 

Sophy of Krasnovia. London: Arrowsmith, I906; 
New York: Harper, 1906. Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'06, 2, 508. 

Tales of Two People. London: Methuen, 1907; New 
York: separate publication of one tale, Hele^ia's 
Path, McClure, 1907. Remaining tales published 
under title of Love's Logic, and Other Stories. 
New York: McClure, 1908. Reviewed: Academy, 73, 
117; Athenceum, '07, 2, 440; Spectator, 99, 437. 

The Great Miss Driver. London: Methuen, 19O8; 
New York: McClure, I9O8. Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'08, 2, 397; Indep., 65, 1002; Spectator, 101, 
636. 

Second String. London: Nelson, 1910; New York: 
Doubleday, Page, 19IO. Reviewed: Nation (Lon- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 445 

don), 7, 252; Sat. Rev,, 109, 532; Spectator, 104, 
734. 
Mrs. Maxon Protests. London: Methuen, 1911 ; New 
York: Harper; serialized in Metropol. Mag., Oct., 
1910, and following issues. Reviewed: Academy, 
81, 412; Athenceum, '11, 2, 293; Bookman, S3, 
532; Indep., 71, 547; Lit. Dig., 43, 214; N. Y. 
Times, 16, 372 and 407; Sat. Rev., 112, 337. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Academy, The, " Anthony Hope," 52, 489- 
Beerbohm, Max, " Captain Dieppe, by Anthony Hope 

and Harrison Rhodes," Sat. Rev., 97, 264. 
Beerbohm, Max, " The Talent of Anthony Hope," 

Sat. Rev., 89/169. 
Booh Buyer, The, Article on Anthony Hope, 12, 489- 
Booh Nervs Monthly, The, Article on Anthony Hope, 

13, 8, and I6, 702. 
Critic, The, " Anthony Hope as Lecturer," 31, 252. 
Lamp, The, Article on Anthony Hope, 26, 187. 
Living Age, The, " The Method of Anthony Hope," 

255, Q^9. 
McCarthy, Justin Huntley, " The Prisoner of Zenda 

on the Stage," Gentleman's Mag., N.S., 5Q, 315. 
Saturday Review, The, " The Works of Anthony 

Hope," 8, 145. 
Sherard, R. H., " Anthony Hope," Idler, 8, 24. 

RUDYARD KIPLING* 

The various editions and reprints of Mr. Kipling's 
works, and the Kiplingiana of all sorts that has 

* The Kipling Index : being a Guide to authorized American 
Trade Editions may be had free from Messrs. Doubleday, Page 
& Co., Garden City, L. I., N. Y., upon receipt of five cents for 
postage. 



446 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

accumulated around them have already been made 
the subject of bibliographical industry so often that 
no useful purpose would be served by doing over 
again here in a necessarily condensed form what 
has already been done thoroughly elsewhere. More- 
over, as most of this author's work consists of short 
stories and short poems, an adequate bibliography 
would constitute a small volume in itself. It seems 
sufficient to refer to a few of the best sources, from 
which complete lists of bibliographies will be readily 
obtainable. 
Clemens, Will M., A Ken of Kipling, Toronto: 

Murray, 1899- 
Robertson, W., The Kipling Guide Booh, London: 

Holland Book Co., 1899- 
Knowles, F. L., A Kipling Primer, London: Chatto, 

1900. 
Monkshood, G. F., Rudyard Kipling, the Man and 

His Work, London: Greening, 1902. 
Notes and Queries, Long list of American editions, 
in issue of Jan. 1, 1902, p. 4; list supplemented 
by Col. Pridieux in issue of Feb. 1, 1902, and 
subsequent numbers, giving list of Allahabad books. 
Powell, F. York, Article in English Illustrated Maga- 
zine, Vol. 30, 1903-4. 
Young, W. Arthur, A Kipling Dictionary, London: 
Routledge, 1911; New York: Button, 1912. 

WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

At the Gates of Samaria: A Novel. London: Heine- 
mann, 1894; Lane, 1905; pop. ed., 1910. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 46, 553. 

The Demagogue and Lady Phayre. London: Heine- 
mann (Pioneer Series), 1895; London and New 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 447 

York: Lane^ 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 49^ 218; 
Athenceum, '96, 1, 248. 

A Study in Shadows. London: Ward & D., 1896; 
London and New York: Lane, 1898. Reviewed: 
Atliena;um, '96, 1, 710. 

Derelicts. London and New York: Lane, 1897; Lon- 
don: Newnes, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 53, 
Suppl., Jan. 22, 94; Athenceum, '97, 2, 487. 

Idols. London and New York: Lane, 1898-99; Lon- 
don: Newnes, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 66, 18; 
Athenceum, '98, 2, 925. 

The White Dove. London and New York: Lane, 
1899; pop. ed., 1911. Reviewed: Athenceum, '00, 
1, 111; Dial (W. M. Payne), 29, 24; Sat. Rev., 
89, 467; Spectator, 84, 94. 

The Usurper. London and New York: Lane, 1901; 
pop. ed., 1911. Reviewed: Academy, 61, 462; 
Athenceum, '01, 2, 808; Spectator, 87, 907. 

Where Love Is. London and New York: Lane, 1903; 
London: Newnes, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 65, 
328; Athenceum, '03, 2, 647; Independent, 55, 
2936. 

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. London and New 
York: Lane, 1905; pop. ed., I91O. Reviewed: 
Academy, 68, 664; Athenceum, '05, 1, 587; In- 
depen., 59, 335. 

The Beloved Vagabond. London and New York: 
Lane, I906. Reviewed: Academy, 71, 445; Athe- 
nceum, '06, 2, 989; Spectator, 97, 989. 

Septimus. London: Murray, 1909; New York: Lane, 
1909; serialized (under title of Simple Septimus) 
in American Mag., May, '08-Jan., '09. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '09, 1, 193; Atlantic, 103, 711; Book- 
man, 28, 594; Dial (W. M. Payne), 46, 263; 
Forum, 41, 180; Indep., 66, 699; Nation, 88, 117; 
N. Y. Times, 14, 36 and 376; Nth. Amer., 189, 
783; Outlook, 91, 107; Spectator, 102, 135. 



448 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Simon the Jester. London and New York: Lane, 
1910 ; serialized, Amer. Mag., Nov., IQOp-lO. Re- 
viewed: Athe7i(Bum, '10, 1, 288 and 670; Atlantic, 
106, 810; Bookman, 31, 507; Cath. World, 91, 
692; Dial (W. M. Payne), 49, 41 ; Indep., 69, 771 ; 
Nation, 90, 607; N. Y. Times, 15, 347; Outlook, 
95, 370; Rev. of Rev., 42, 124; Sat. Rev., 109, 
698; Spectator, 104, 1023. 

A Christmas Mystery: The Story of Three Wise 
Men. New York: Lane, I91O. Reviewed: Cath. 
World, 92, 387; Dial, 49, 530; Indep., 69, 1241; 
Nation, 91, 577; N. Y. Times, 15, 701. 

The Glory of Clementina Wing. London: Lane, 
1911 ; New York (under title of The Glory of 
Clementina): Lane, 1911- Reviewed: Academy, 
81, 113; Atlantic, 108, 567; Bellman, 11, 338; 
Bookman, S4t, 76; Cath. World, 94, 105; Dial, 51, 
202; Indep., 71, 317; Lit. Dig., 43, 567; Nation, 
93, 143; N. Y. Times, 16, 481; Outlook, 99, 259; 
Rev. of Rev., 44, 382; Sat. Rev., 112, 146; Spec- 
tator, 107, 424. 

The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol. London 
and New York: Lane, 1912. 

Stella Maris. Serialized in Century Mag., Jan., 1912, 
and subsequent issues. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Bookman, The, " The Personal Locke," 28, 424. 
Burton, Richard, " Locke and His Literary Labors," 

Book News, 29, 369- 
Forman, H. J., Sketch of W. J. Locke, Book News, 

29, 373. 

ALFRED OLLIVANT 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Owd Boh, the Grey Dog of Kenmuir. London: 
Methuen, 1898; New York (under the title of 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 449 

Boh, Son of Battle) : Doiibleday, Page, 1898. Pe- l-^" 

viewed: Athenceum, '98, 2, 605; Academy, 55, 291. 
Danny: The Story of a Dandle Dinmont. London: 

Murray, 1903; New York: Doubleday, Page, 1902. 

Reviewed: Academy, 64, 178 and 205; Athenceum, 

'03, 1, 334; Indep., 55, 506. 
Redcoat Captain: A Story of That Country. Lon- 
don: Murray, 1907; New York: Macmillan Co., 

1907. Reviewed: Athenceum, '07, 2, 515. 
The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea. London: 

Murray, I9O8; New York: Macmillan Co., 1908. 

Reviewed, Athenceum, '08, 2, 676. 
The Taming of John Blunt. London: Methuen, I9II ; 

New York: Doubleday, Page, 1911. Reviewed: 

Boohman, 34, 435; Spectator, 107, 907. 



II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Bookman, The, " Concerning Alfred Ollivant," 28, 
311. 

Phelps, William Lyon, " The Novels of Alfred Ol- 
livant," Modern Novelists, 159; reprinted from In- 
dep., 67, 470. 



EDEN PHILLPOTTS 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

The End of a Life. London: Simpkin, 1891- 

Folly and Fresh Air. London: Trischeler, 1891; rev. 

ed., illus. by J. Ley Pethridge, Hurst, 1899; new 

ed., Hurst & B., 1907. 
Tiger's Cub. London: Simpkin, 1892; Arrowsmith, 

1904. Reviewed: Academy, 42, 68. 
Summer Clouds and Other Stories. London: Tuck, 

1893. 



450 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Some Every-Day Folk. London: Osgood^ 1894. 

A Deal with the Devil. London: Bliss^ 1895; 
Newnes, 1905. Reviewed: Academy, 47, 376. 

Down Dartmoor Way. London: Osgood, 1895. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '95, 2, 868. 

My Laughing Philosopher. London: Innes, 1896; 
Everett, 1909. Reviewed: Academy, 49, 444; 
Athenceum, '96, 1, 412; Sat. Rev., 82, 68. 

Lying Prophets. London: Innes, 1897; New York: 
Stokes, 1899. Reviewed: Academy, 51, 176; Athe- 
nceum, '97, 1, 241. 

Children of the Mist. London: Innes, 1898; Meth- 
uen, 1905; New York: Putnam, 1899. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '98, 2, 604. 

Loup-Garou! London: Sands, 1899- Reviewed: 
Academy, 56, 683; Athenceum, '99, 1, 432. 

The Human Boy. London: Methuen, 1899, 6th ed., 
1901; New York: Harper, 1900. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '99, 2, 221; Eclect. Mag., 134, 128; Indep., 
52, 196; Spectator, 83, 319- 

Sons of the Morning. London: Methuen, 1900; 
Amalgamated Press, 1909; New York: Putnam, 
1900. Reviewed: Academy, 59, 360; Athenceum, 
'00, 2, 342; Bookman (Hovey), 12, 233; Indep., 
52, 2454; Outlook, 66, 283; Sat. Rev., 90, 592; 
Spectator, 85, 379. 

The Good Red Earth. London: Arrowsmith, 1901; 
reprinted (under title of Johnny Fortright), 1904. 
Reviewed: Academy, 60, 425; Athenceum, '01, 1, 
689; Indep., 53, 1744; Outlook, 68, 180; Spec- 
tator, 86, 773. 

The Striking Hours. London: Methuen, 1901. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 61, 173; Athenceum, '01, 2, 221; 
Spectator, 87, 289. 

Fancy Free. London: Methuen, 1901 ; pop. ed., 1905. 
Reviewed: Spectator, 87, 847. 

The River. London: Methuen, 1902; Nash, I9O8; 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 451 

New York: Stokes, 1902. Reviewed: Academy, 6S, 
469; Athenceum, '02, 2, 407; Bookman, 16, 180; 
Critic, 42, 160; Indep., 54, 2834; Spectator, 89, 
535. 

The Transit of the Red Dragon, and Other Tales. 
London: Arrowsmith, 1903. Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'03, 1, 400; Spectator, 90, 459- 

The Golden Fetich. London: Harper, 1903; New 
York: Dodd, 1903. 

The American Prisoner. London: Methuen, 1904; 
Nelson, 1907; New York: Macmillan Co., 1904. 
Reviewed: Academy, QQ, 247; Athenceum, '04, 1, 
236; Indep., 5Q, 500; Spectator, 92, 188. 

The Farm of the Dagger. London: Newnes, 1904; 
Nelson, 1909; New York: Dodd, 1904. Reviewed: 
Academy, 67, 311. 

My Devon Year. London: Methuen, 1904. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '04, 1, 8. 

The Secret Woman. London: Methuen, 1905; 
(Handy Modern Fiction), Collins, 1907; New 
York: Macmillan Co., 1905. Reviewed: Academy, 

68, 83; Athenceum, '05, 1, 105; Indep., 51, 559, 
and 59y 1151; Spectator, 9^, 33. 

Knock at a Venture. London: Methuen, 1905; New 
York: Macmillan Co., 1905. Reviewed: Academy, 

69, 906; Athenceum, '05, 2, 368; Indep., 59, 1348. 
Up-Along and Down-Along. London: Methuen, 

1905. Reviewed: Athenceum, '05, 2, 894. 

The Portreeve. London: Methuen, I906; Amalga- 
mated Press, 1909; New York: Macmillan Co., 

1906. Reviewed: Academy, 70, 139; Athenceum, 
'06, 1, 194; Indep., 60, 1942 and 61, 1158. 

The Unlucky Number. London: Innes, I906. 

My Garder. London: (Country Life Library) 
Newnes, 1906; New York: Scribner, 1907. 

The Poacher's Wife. London: Methuen, 1906. Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '06, 2, 578. 



452 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Whirlwind. London: Chapman & H., 1907; 
Cassell, 1908; New York: McClure, Ph., 1907; 
serialized in Fortnightly, Jan.-Dec., 1906. Re- 
viewed: Academy, 72, 95; AthencBum, '07, 1, 129; 
l7idep., 62, 1090. 

The Folk Afield. London: Metlmen, 1907; New 
York: Putnam, 1907. Reviewed: Athenceum, '07, 
2, 686. 

The Mother: A Novel. London: Ward, L., 1908; 
pop. ed., 1909; New York (under title of The 
Mother of the Man): Dodd, 1908; serialized in 
Bookman, June, 1907-Mch., 1908. Reviewed: 
Athenceum, '08, 1, 221. 

The Human Boy Again. London: Chapman & H., 
1908; S. Paul, 1910. Reviewed: Athenceum, '08, 1, 
476; Spectator, 100, 870. 

The Virgin in Judgment. London: Cassell, 1909; 
New York: Moffat, 1908. 

The Three Brothers. London: Hutchinson, 1909; 
Cassell, 1910; New York: Macmillan Co., 1909- 
Reviewed: Athenceum, '09, 1, 460; Atlantic, 103, 
704; Bookman, 29, 94; Nation, 88, 282; N. Y. 
Times, 14, 103 and 378; Outlook, 91, 532; Put- 
nam's, 6, 494; Rev. of Rev., 39, 762. 

The Fun of the Fair. London: Murray, 1909- Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '09, 2, 206; Spectator, 103, 170. 

The Haven. London: Murray, 1909; New York: 
Lane, 1909- Reviewed: Athenaeum, '09, 2, 521; 
N. Y. Times, 14, 740; Sat. Rev., 108, 668; Spec- 
tator, 103, 851. 

The Thief of Virtue. London: Murray, 1910; New 
York: Lane, 1910. Reviewed: Athenceum, '10, 1, 
337; Atlantic, 106, 809; Indep., 68, 1091; Nation, 
90, 435; Nth. Amer., 192, 135; Sat. Rev., 100, 374; 
Spectator, 104, 590. 

Tales of the Tenements. London: Murray, 1910; 
New York: Lane, 1910. Reviewed: Athenceum, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 

'10, 2, 355; N. Y. Times, 15, 650; Sat. Rev., 110, 
398; Spectator, 105, 612. 

The Flint Heart: A Fairy Story. London: Smith, E., 
1910; New York: Button, 1910. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '10, 2, 762; Bookman, 32, 404; Indep., 69, 
1259; Lit. Dig., 41, 1044; Nation, 91, 584; N. Y, 
Times, 15, 569; Nth. Amer., 192, 851 ; Rev. of Rev., 
42, 755. 

Wild Fruit. London and New York: Lane, 1910. 
Reviewed: Academy, 79, 518; Athenceum, '10, 2, 
762; Dial, 50, 162; Lit. Dig., 42, 80 and 222; Na- 
tion, 92, 501; N. Y. Times, 15, 718. 

Demeter's Daughter. London: Methuen, 1911; New 
York: Lane, 1911. Reviewed: Academy, 80, 198; 
Athenceum, '11, 1, 328; Bookman, S3, 327; Nation, 
92, 447; N. Y, Times, 16, 237; Rev. of Rev., 43, 
750. 

The Beacon. London: Unwin, 1911; New York: 
Lane Co., 1911- Reviewed: Academy, 81, 246; 
Athenceum, '11, 2, 237; Bookman, 34i, 442; Nation, 
9S, 575; Outlook, 99, 788; Sat. Rev., 112, 370. 

The Dance of the Months. London: Graves & G., 
1911. 

In Collaboration with Arnold Bennett: 

Sinews of War. A Romance of London and the Sea. 
London: T. W. Laurie, 1906; Newnes, 1908; New 
York (under title of Doubloons) : McClure, Ph., 
1906. Reviewed: Academy, 71, 503; Athenceum, 
'06, 2, 687; Indep., 62, 385; Spectator, 97, 938. 

The Statue. London: Cassell, I9O8; pop. ed., I9II. 
Reviewed: Athenceum, '08, 1, 476. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Academy, The, "Some Younger Reputations: Eden 
Phillpotts," 55, 431. 



454 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Booh News Monthly, The, " Eden Phillpotts/* 18, 89. 
Chapman, E. M., ** The Newer Fiction," in English 

Literature in Account with Religion, 552. 
Colbron, Grace Isabel, " The Quality of Phillpotts," 

Forum, S9, 542. 
Gilder, Joseph B., Article on Phillpotts, Critic, 38, 22. 
Howells, Wiliam Dean, " The Fiction of Phillpotts," 

Nth. Amer., IQO, 15. 
Shelley, H. C, " Phillpotts and Dartmoor," Booh 

News, 28, 499. 
White, M. O., " With Phillpotts in Dartmoor," Out- 

looh, 91, 194. 

MAY SINCLAIR 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

Essays in Verse. London: Paul, 1892. 

Audrey Craven. London: Blackwood & S., 1897; 
New York: Author's Ed., Holt, 1906. Reviewed: 
Academy, 51 (Suppl. June 12), 12; Athenaeum, '97, 
2, 122. 

Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson. London: Blackwood & 
S., 1898; Constable, 1909; New York (under title 
of The Tysons): Holt, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 
55, 4>78 ;Athen(Bum, '98, 2, 786. 

Trvo Sides of a Question. (Containing Superseded 
and The Cosmopolitan.) London: Constable, 1901 ; 
New York: Superseded reprinted separately. Au- 
thor's Edition, Holt, 1906. Reviewed: Athenceum, 
'01, 1, 332; Spectator, 96, 391. 

The Divine Fire. London: Constable, 1904; Nash, 
1911; New York: Holt, 1904. Reviewed: Nation, 
79, 419; Spectator, 9S, 1089- 

The Helpmate: A Novel. London: Constable, 1907; 
New York: Holt, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 73, 
929; Athenceum, '07, 2, 204. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 455 

The Judgment of Eve. New York: Harper, 1908. 
Reviewed: Independent, 64-, lOSQ. 

Kitty Tailleur. London: Constable, 1908; New 
York (under title of The Immortal Moment) : 
Doubleday, P., 1908. Reviewed: Academy, 75, 17; 
Athenceum, '08, 2, 122; Spectator, 101, 237. 

The Creators: A Comedy. London: Constable, 1910; 
New York: Century Co., 1910. Reviewed: Athe- 
nceum, '10, 2, 415; Dial (W. M. Payne), 49, 287; 
Indep., Q9, 1156; N. Y. Times, 15, 584; Nation 
(London), 8, 28; Sat. Rev., 110, 688. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Cecil, Lady Robert, " The Cant of Unconventionality 
and The Helpmate/' Liv. Age, 255, 579- 

Underbill, E., A Reply to the Above Article,, Liv. 
Age, 256, 322. 

JOHN TREVENA 

I. PUBLISHED VOLUMES, WITH REVIEWS 

A Pixy in Petticoats. London: (Anonymous), A. 
Rivers, 1906; new ed., 1908; New York: Moffat, 
1909. Reviewed: Athenceum, '06, 2, 474. 

Arminel of the West. London: A. Rivers, 1907; new 
ed. (Evergreen Novels), 1909; New York: Moffat, 
1909. Reviewed: Academy, 72, 393; Athenceum, 
'07, 1, 601; Atlantic, 103, 710; Bookman, 29, 189; 
Indep., 66, 1082; N. Y. Times, 14, 28. 

Furze the Cruel. London: A. Rivers, 1907; New 
York: Moffat, 1907. Reviewed: Academy, 73, 66; 
Athenceum, '07, 2, 683. 

Heather. London: A. Rivers, 19O8; New York: Mof- 
fat, 1909. Reviewed: Athenceum, 'OS, 2, 149; 
Bookman, 29, 525; Nation, 88, 92; N, Y. Times, 
14, 366. 



4^56 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Dartmoor House that Jack Built. London: A. 
Rivers, 1909- Reviewed: Athenceum, '09, 1, ^^9- 

Granite: A Novel. London: A. Rivers, 1909- Re- 
viewed: Athenceum, '09, 2, 758. 

Written in the Rain. London: Mills & B., 1910. 

Bracken. London: A. Rivers, 1910; New York: 
Kennerley, 1912. Reviewed: Academy, 79, 447. 

II. APPRECIATIONS, SPECIAL ARTICLES, ETC. 

Bookman, The, " The Habits of John Trevena," 28, 3. 



INDEX 



OF NAMES AND TITLES 



Abaft the Funnel (Kip- 
ling), 124 

Academy, The, 20, 282, 345, 
382 

Affair of Dishonor, An, (De 
Morgan), 33, 49-51 

Alice- for-Short (De Mor- 
gan), 39-41, 53 

Alice in Wonderland (Car- 
roll), 286 

Almayer's Folly (Conrad), 
7, 11, 12, 19 

Ambassadors, The, (James), 
193, 346 

Amy Foster (Conrad), 25- 
26 

Anna of the Five Towns 
(Bennett), 213, 221-222 

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 
113 

Annunzio, d', Gabriele, 299, 
349, 377, 400 

Apuleius, 282 

Arminel of the West (Tre- 
vena), 329, 331-333 

Assommoir, L', (Zola), 357 

At the End of the Passage 
(Kipling), 142 

Athenaeum, The, 101, 205, 
208 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 2 

Audrey Craven (Sinclair), 
256 

Babe in Bohemia, A, (Dan- 

by), 386 
Baccarat (Danby), 386, 400- 

401 



Bagot, Richard, 368 
Ballad of Beading Gaol 

The, (Wilde), 398 
Balzac, Honore de, 4, 358, 

359 
Bar Sinister, The, (Davis), 

283 
Barbary Sheep (Hichens), 

365-366 
Barrack - Boom Ballads 

(Kipling), 123, 130 
Barrie, J. M., 286 
Battle of the Weak, The, 

(Dudeney), 322 
Bazan, Emilia Pardo, 378 
Beacon, The (PhiUpotts), 

116-119 
Bella Donna (Hichens), 350, 

369-370 
Beloved Vagabond, The, 

(Locke), 148, 150, 153, 

155, 163-165, 167, 168, 358 
Below the Milldam (Kip- 
ling), 143 
Bennett, Arnold, 206-231, 

251 325 
Benson, E. F., 233, 251 
Besant, Sir Walter, 233 
Between Two Thieves (De- 

han), 378 
Beyond the Pale (Kipling), 

142 
Black, William, 97, 251 
Black Beauty (Sewell), 283 
Black Spaniel, The, (Hich- 
ens), 348, 351, 352, 353 
Bob, Son of Battle (Olli- 

vant), 280, 282-285 



457 



458 



INDEX 



Bohlau, Helene, 378 

Bohme, Margarete, 378 

Bookman, The, 120 

Boynton, H. W., 52 

Bracken (Trevena), 324, 
338-341 

Brazenhead the Great (Hew- 
lett), 80, 82-85 

Brewster's Millions (Mc- 
Cutcheon), 216 

Browning, Robert, 13 

Buondelmonte's Saga (Hew- 
lett), 78, 79 

Buried Alive (Bennett), 
217-218 

Cable, George W., 95 

Call of the Blood, The, 
(Hichens), 366-367 

Call of the Wild, The, (Lon- 
don), 283 

Capsina, The, (Benson), 
233 

Card, The, (Bennett), 218- 
219 

Cecil, Lady Robert, 35 

Charlatan, The, (Gissing), 
251 

Chene et le Roseau, he, 
(La Fontaine), 21 

Children of the Mist (Phill- 
potts), 94, 101-104, 105, 
107, 110, 113, 327 

Children of the Sea (Con- 
rad), 14, 20 

City of Pleasure, The, (Ben- 
nett), 216 

Clay hanger (Bennett), 213, 
219, 226-230 

Collins, Wilkie, 40 

Colossus, The, (Roberts), 
232 

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 50 

Conrad, Joseph, 1-30, 33, 54, 
55, 56, 107, 204, 290 

Contemporary Review, The, 
2 



Copper Crash (Danby), 
386 

Country House, The, (Gals- 
worthy), 182, 191-194 

Courting of Dinah Shadd, 
The, (Kipling), 142 

Crawford, F. Marion, 251, 
368 

Critic, The, 344 

"Danby, Frank," 254, 255, 

376-414 
Danny (Ollivant), 280 
Dante, 61 

Daudet, Alphonse, 377 
Davis, Richard Harding, 

283 
Debacle, La (Zola), 13 
Dehan, Richard, 378 
De Morgan, William Frend, 

31-53, 281 
Denry the Audacious (Ben- 
nett), 217-219 
Departmental Ditties (Kip- 
ling), 123 
Derelicts (Locke), 156-157, 

169 
Dickens, Charles, 4, 8, 33, 

120, 178, 179 
Divine Fire, The, (Sinclair), 

208, 252, 253, 254, 255, 

256, 262, 271-278, 279 
Dolly Dialogues, The, 

(Hope), 233, 234, 235, 

237-239, 244, 250 
Dop Doctor, The, (Dehan), 

378 
Dr. Phillips (Danby), 379, 

387 
Drums of the Fore-and-Aft, 

The, (Kipling), 139 
Dudeney, Mrs. Henry, 297- 

323 
Dumas, Alexandre, 236 
Du Maurier, George, 34 
Dweller on the Threshold, 

The, (Hichens), 352 



INDEX 



459 



Earthwork out of Tuscany, 
(Hewlett), 65 

Eighteenth Century Col- 
ored Prints (Frankau), 
382 

Eliot, George, 95 

Essays in Verse (Sinclair), 
256 

Esther Waters (Moore), 101 

Falk (Conrad), 26-28 

Felix (Hichens), 357-359 

Fielding, Henry, 120 

Fille Elisa, La, (E. and J. 
de Goncourt), 377 

Five Nations, The, (Kip- 
ling), 130-135 

Flames (Hichens), 343, 
351 

Flaubert, Gustave, 8, 208, 
209, 230, 377 

Florence, Villani's History 
of, 58, 59 

Folly Corner (Dudeney), 
297, 299, 306-312, 313 

Fond Adventures (Hew- 
lett), 78 

Fool Errant, The, (Hew- 
lett), 80-82 

Forest Lovers, The, (Hew- 
lett), 20, 57, 65, 82, 87 

France, Anatole, 153 

Frankau, Mrs. Julia (see 
"Frank Danby "). 

Fraternity (Galsworthy), 
178, 182, 194-199, 200 

Fromentin, Eugene, 348, 349 

Fruitful Vine, The, (Hich- 
ens), 350, 370-374 

Furze the Cruel (Trevena), 
324, 328, 329, 333-337, 338, 
341 

Galdds, Benito Perez, 230 
Galsworthy, John, 2, 3, 4, 

5, 21, 177-205, 251, 281, 

325 



Garden of Allah, The, 

(Hichens), 342, 347, 350, 

353, 362-365, 370, 375 
Gautier, Theophile, 349 
Gentleman, The, (Ollivant), 

50, 280, 289-296 
Gissing, George, 208, 250 
Glimjjse, The, (Bennett), 

217, 219-220 
Glory of Clementina, The, 

(Locke), 172-175 
Glyn, Elinor, 374 
God in the Car, The, 

(Hope), 232 
Golden Ass, The, (Apu- 

leius), 282 
Golden Fetich, The, (Phill- 

potts), 109 
Goncourt, De, (Edouard 

and Jules), 208, 209, 230, 

377 
Good Red Earth, The, 

(Phillpotts), 107, 327 
Grand Babylon Hotel, The, 

(Bennett), 215 
Granite (Trevena), 333, 

338 
Great Miss Driver, The, 

(Hope), 244-247 
Green Carnation, The, 

(Hichens), 342, 344, 348, 

351 
Grimm's Fairy Tales, 286 
"Gyp," 233 

Habitation Enforced, An, 
(Kipling), 143-144 

Haggard, H. Rider, 109 

Halficay House (Hewlett), 
56, 88-90 

Hans Brinker (Dodge), 41 

Hardy, Thomas, 95 

Heart of a Child, The, (Dan- 
by), 379, 382, 384, 401- 
404, 408 

Heart of Darkness (Con- 
rad), 14, 24, 29 



460 



INDEX 



Heather (Trevena), 328, 

330, 333, 337, 338 
Helena's Path (Hope), 243- 

244. 
Helpmate, The, (Sinclair), 

252, 255, 262-269 
Hewlett, Maurice, 50, 54-93, 

94 
Hichens, Robert, 342-375 
Hilda Lessways (Bennett), 

227 
Hitopadega, The, 137 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 52 
Hope, Anthony, 232-251 
Howells, William Dean, 95, 

113, 206, 211, 230 
Hugo (Bennett), 216 
Huysmans, Joris Karl, 377 

Idols (Locke), 156, 159- 

160, 169 
Imaginative Man, An, 

(Hichens), 354-355 
Immortal Moment, The, 

(Sinclair), 269-271 
Incompleat Etonian, An, 

(Danby), 379, 382 
Indiscretion of the Duchess, 

The, (Hope), 235 
Innocente, U (Annunzio), 

400 
Intrusions of Peggy, The, 

(Hope), 250 
Island Pharisees, The, 

(Galsworthy), 180, 183 
" Islanders, The," (Kip- 
ling), 133, 135 
It Never Can Happen 

Again (De Morgan), 45- 

48, 62 
Ivanhoe (Scott), 291 

James, Henry, 1, 8, 33, 128, 
130, 142, 152, 230, 346 

Joseph in Jeopardy (Dan- 
by), 379, 380, 382, 408- 
414 



Joseph Vance (De Morgan), 
32, 33, 34, 37-39, 50, 53 

Judgment of Eve, The, (Sin- 
clair), 255 

Jungle Books, The, (Kip- 
ling), 127, 130, 135, 137, 
143, 282 

Just-So Stories, The, (Kip- 
ling), 127, 282, 286 

Katasaritsagara, The, 137 
Kim (Kipling), 17, 55, 129, 

130, 135, 137-141 
Kipling, Rudyard, 17, 54, 

55, 5Q, 122-147, 282 

La Fontaine, Jean de, 21 

Lavedan, Henri, 233 

Leonora (Bennett), 221, 222 

"Lesson, The," (Kipling), 
133, 135 

Let the Eoof Fall In (Dan- 
by), 386 

Letters from the Ea^t 
(Kipling), 129 

Lettres de Jeunesse (Zola), 
124 

Light that Failed, The, 
(Kipling), 283 

Likely Story, A, (De Mor- 
gan), 33, 49, 51, 52 

Little Novels of Italy (Hew- 
lett), 78 

Little White Bird, The, 
(Barrie), 286 

Locke, William John, 148- 
176, 325, 358 

Londoners, The, (Hichens), 
343, 351 

Loot of Cities, The, (Ben- 
nett), 216 

Lord Jim (Conrad), 21, 24, 
29, 204 

Loti, Pierre, 349 

Loup-Garou! (Phillpotts), 
94 

Lourdes (Zola), 348 



INDEX 



461 



Lucas, E. v., 34 
Lying Prophets (Phillpotts), 
98-101 

McCutcheon, George Barr, 
216 

McTeague (Norris), 335 

Maartens, Maarten, 251 

Macy, John A,, 2 

Maison Tellier, La, (Mau- 
passant), 377 

Man from the North, A, 
(Bennett), 207, 209 

Man of Property, The, 
(Galsworthy), 180, 181, 
183-191, 194, 200 

Man Who Would Be King, 
The, (Kipling), 137 

"Mandalay" (Kipling), 129 

Margueritte, Paul, 400 

Mark of the Beast, The, 
(Kipling), 142 

Maternity of Harriott Wick- 
en, The, (Dudeney), 301- 
306 

Maupassant, Guy de, 8, 152, 
208, 230, 376 

Maxwell, William B., 251 

Men of Marloive's (Dude- 
ney), 297, 312-317 

Mendes, Catulle, 359 

Meredith, George, 33, 152, 
325 

Merrick, Leonard, 207, 325 

Mill on the Floss, The, 
(Eliot), 95 

Mine Own People (Kip- 
ling), 126 

Mirror of the Sea, The, 
(Conrad), 19, 29 

Moore, F. Frankfort, 233 

Moore, George, 377 

Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, 
The, (Locke), 148, 150, 
153, 160-163, 166, 169 

Mother of the Man, The, 
(Phillpotts), 115 



Motley, A, (Galsworthy), 

200-201 
Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson 

(Sinclair), 257-261 
3Irs. Bathurst (Kipling), 

144-146 
Mrs. M ax o n Protests 

(Hope), 247-249 
Mummer's Wife, The, 

(Moore), 377 
Murger, Henri, 153 

Nana (Zola), 377 

Nell Gwynn, Comedian, 

(Moore), 233 
New Canterbury Tales, The, 

(Hewlett), 78 
New Review, The, 17 
Nicoll, Dr. Robertson, 223 
Nigger of the Narcissus, 

The, (Conrad), 13, 14, 19, 

290 
Norris, Frank, 334, 335, 336, 

337 
Nostromo (Conrad), 21-24, 

29 

Octopus, The, (Norris), 336 

Old Wives' Tale, The, (Ben- 
nett), 206, 213, 219, 222- 
226 

OUivant, Alfred, 50, 94, 280- 
296 

On the City Wall (Kipling), 
142 

Open Country (Hewlett), 
88, 90-92 

Orange Girl, The, (Besant), 
233 

Orchard Thief, The, (Dude- 
ney), 297 

"Ouida," 154, 155, 282 

Outcast of the Island, The, 
(Conrad), 11 

Pardon, Le, (Margueritte), 
400 



462 



INDEX 



Pascarel ("Ouida"), 154 

Patrician, The, (Gals- 
worthy), 183, 200, 202- 
203, 205 

Pemberton, Max, 50, 215 

Personal Record, A, (Con- 
rad), 1, 11, 18 

Phantom Rickshaw, The, 
(Kipling), 126 

Phillpotts, Eden, 94-121, 
326, 327 

Phroso (Hope), 232 

Pickwick Papers, The, 
(Dickens), 34 

Pigs in Clover (Danby), 
255, 376, 379, 383, 384, 
386, 388-398, 404, 405, 414 

Pinero, Arthur, 52 

Pixy in Petticoats, A, (Tre- 
vena), 329, 330, 333 

Plain Tales from the Hills, 
(Kipling), 130, 135, 181 

Polite ^Farces (Bennett), 
207 

Portreeve, The, (Phillpotts), 
110-112 

Prince Otto (Stevenson), 
233 

Prisoner of Zenda, The, 
(Hope), 233, 236, 250 

Puck o' Pook's Hill (Kip- 
ling), 141 

Quatre Evangiles, Les, 
(Zola), 124 

Queen's Quair, The, (Hew- 
lett), 56, 59, 66, 71-78, 85, 
92 

Quisante (Hope), 239-241, 
250 

Rachel Lorian (Dudeney), 

297, 322 
Redcoat Captain (Ollivant), 

280, 285-289 
Rescue of Plufjles, The, 

(Kipling), 124 



Rest Harrow (Hewlett), 82, 

88, 90-92, 93 
Return, The, (Conrad), 20 
Rewards and Fairies (Kip- 
ling), 54, 123 
Richard Yea - and - Nay 

(Hewlett), 50, 55, 56, 66- 

71, 72, 92, 291 
River, The, (Phillpotts), 94, 

107-109 
Road in Tuscany, The, 

(Hewlett), 58-60 
Roberts, Morley, 232 
Robin Brilliant (Dudeney), 

297 , 
Rod, Edouard, 259 
Ruskin, John, 148, 170 

Sapho (Daudet), 377 

Saracinesca (Crawford), 368 

Sebastian (see Incompleat 
Etonian), (Danby), 404- 
408 

Secret Agent, The, (Con- 
rad), 29 

Secret Woman, The, (Phill- 
potts), 109-110, 113 

Sense de la Vie, Le (Rod), 
269 

Septimus (Locke), 148, 150, 
167-169, 170, 175 

Serao, Matilde, 378 

Servant of the Public, A, 
(Hope), 241-243, 250 

Shakespeare, A Life of, 
(Lee), 20 

Ship that Found Herself, 
The, (Kipling), 124-125 

Shoulder-Knot, The, (Dude- 
ney), 297 

Simon Dale (Hope), 233 

Simon the Jester (Locke), 
148, 170-172 

Sinclair, May, 208, 252-979 

Skram, Amelia, 378 

Slave, The, (Hichens), 343, 
349, 355-357 



INDEX 



463 



Smollett, Tobias, 120, 293 

Snaith, John Collis, 206, 325 

Soldiers Three (Kipling), 
123, 130 

Somehow Good (De Mor- 
gan), 41-45 

Sons of the Morning (Phill- 
potts), 104-lOT, 115 

Spanish Jade, The, (Hew- 
lett), 87-88 

Sphinx's Lawyer, The, 
(Danby), 379, 398-400 

Spindle and Plough (Dude- 
ney), 297, 299, 318-322 

Spirit in Prison, A, (Hich- 
ens), 367-368 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 290 

Stoker, Bram, 35 

Stooping Lady, The, (Hew- 
lett), 80, 85-87 

Story of the Gadshys, The, 
(Kipling), 141, 144, 234 

Strindberg, Gustav, 377 

Sudermann, Hermann, 376 

Superseded (Sinclair), 254, 
261-262 

Tales of Unrest (Conrad), 
20 

Talisman, The, (Scott), 72 

Taming of John Blunt 
(Ollivant), 280 

Teresa of Watling Street, 
(Bennett), 216 

Tertium Quid, The, (Kip- 
ling), 127 

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 
(Hardy), 42 

Thackeray, William Make- 
peace, 33, 40, 120 

They (Kipling), 141 

Thompson - Seton, Ernest, 
282 

Three Brothers, The, 
(Phillpotts), 116 

Three Weeks (Glyn), 374 

Tolstoy, Leo, 230, 293 



To-morrow (Conrad), 24 
Tongues of Conscience 

(Hichens), 353 
Traces and Discoveries 

(Kipling), 123, 130 
Trevena, John, 324-341 
Trionfo della Morte, II, 

(d'Annunzio), 377 
Trois Mousquetaires, Les, 

(Dumas), 291 
Trollope, Anthony, 8, 35 
"Truce of the Bear, The," 

(Kipling), 123, 129, 133, 

185 
Truth About an Author, 

The, (Bennett), 207, 208 
Turgenev, Ivan, 4, 208 
Typhoon (Conrad), 12, 21, 

24, 29 
Tysons, The, (Sinclair), 252, 

255 

Under the Deodars (Kip- 
ling), 126 

Under Two Flags 
("Ouida"), 154 

Under Western Eyes (Con- 
rad), 29 

Valdes, Armando Palacio, 

230 
Vanity Fair (Thackeray), 

13, 34, 188 
Vie, Une, (Maupassant), 190 
Vie de Boheme, La, (Mur- 

ger), 154 
Villa Buhein (Galsworthy), 

179 
Vintage, The, (Benson), 

233 

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 205 
Ward, James and Wil- 
liam, Life of, (Frankau), 
382 
Waugh, Arthur, 344 



464 



INDEX 



Westminster Review, The, 

178 
Where Love Is (Locke), 

155, 156, 157-159 
Whirlwind, The, (Phill- 

potts), 94, 112-115 
White Dove, A, (Locke), 

169 
" White Man's Burden, 

The," 123 
Wireless (Kipling), 141 



Wise Woods, The, (Dude- 
ney), 323 

Without Benefit of Cler- 
gy (Kipling), 128, 137, 
141 

Woman (London), 207 

Woman with a Fan, The, 
(Hichens), 357, 358-362 

Zola, Emile, 124, 181, 230, 
293, 299, 348, 357, 376 



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